Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

CONTINGENCIES FUND 1985–86

Ordered,
That there be laid before this House accounts of the Contingencies Fund, 1985–86, showing:

(1) The Receipts and Payments in connection with the Fund in the year ended the 31st day of March 1986,
(2) The Distribution of the Capital of the fund at the commencement and close of the year; with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon. [Mr. Malone.]

Mr. Martin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I noticed that until recently, on the Order Paper, I was first in the ballot for questions to the Solicitor-General for Scotland. I understand from the Table Office, which accepted my question, that the Solicitor-General's Department removed my question and transferred it. According to the Table Office, the Department has the power to do that. I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker. If the Minister can remove a question, it means that he has some control over which question comes first. I wonder whether that problem can be looked at.

Mr. Speaker: I undertake to look at the matter. It is in order for Ministers to transfer questions, but in view of what the hon. Gentleman has said, I shall certainly look into the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Domestic Violence

Mr. Ernie Ross: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has any plans to increase the period available for training of constables in order to operate the Matrimonial Homes (Family Protection) (Scotland) Act 1981 and to police domestic violence generally.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): The 1981 Act and the problem of domestic violence generally already feature prominently in the training programme at the Scottish police college. That programme is kept under regular review.

Mr. Ross: Does the Minister really think that two 50-minute periods during an eight-week course are adequate when he says that the problem features prominently? Can he confirm that those two 50-minute periods take place? How can he assess the use of the video "Getting over the Fear", produced by Strathclyde regional council and Scottish Women's Aid, as an aid to the

training of the officers under the Matrimonial Homes (Family Protection) (Scotland) Act when the Scottish Office has neither borrowed nor purchased a copy of the video?

Mr. Lang: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that training is kept under careful consideration. Proper emphasis is given at the Scottish police college as well as at individual force level. The relevance of the video "Getting over the Fear" is being assessed at present by the Scottish police college.

Mr. Tom Clarke: In view of the drastic need for additional hostel accommodation for women who are the victims of domestic violence—I understand that at the moment there are 184 places in Scotland compared with a minimum of 500 recommended by a Select Committee over a decade ago—does the Minister agree that it is not simply a matter of detection and prosecution, important though it is, but is a matter of making adequate resources available so that we can deal with that dreadful problem of women's rights and the defence of them?

Mr. Lang: I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his first appearance at the Dispatch Box in his new role. The point that he raises is worthy of further consideration, although it does not relate directly to the question.

Council of Fisheries Ministers

Mr. Wallace: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last attended a meeting of the EEC Council of Fisheries Ministers.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John MacKay): As Minister responsible for Scottish fisheries I attend meetings of the Council of Fisheries Ministers and was present at the most recent one on 5 November.

Mr. Wallace: I thank the Minister for his answer. Whether he or the Secretary of State attends the next meeting, on the agenda one will expect to see a report on the negotiations between the European Community and Norway on the share-out of North sea herring for next year. Is the Minister aware that the share given to Norway last year was unacceptable to the Scottish fishing industry? Can he assure the House that Her Majesty's Government, through the Community, will press for a fairer share-out for the Scottish fishing industry in the coming year?

Mr. MacKay: I should expect the negotiations between the Community and Norway to be reported to us at the next Council meeting. In fact, the negotiations resumed today. Our objectives are, first, a fair allocation of the joint herring stock between Norway and the Community based on the recent scientific report on the zonal attachment of stocks and, secondly, to agree the transfers of herring and other species in return for transfers of white fish from Norway, which are so important to our industry.

Mr. Pollock: Did my hon. Friend have a chance to discuss at the meeting the funding difficulties experienced by the Scottish fleet? Now that the Community structural programmes are running out, has the Commission put forward any new proposals? Does my hon. Friend agree that, if possible, it would be desirable for such proposals to be in place by the beginning of 1987, so as to provide continuity of employment and support for the hard-pressed boat building yards in Scottish coastal areas?

Mr. MacKay: At our last meeting we discussed the structure proposals put forward by the Commission, but did not reach any conclusions. These matters are currently subject to negotiations in the Community and we expect to return to them at the meeting to be held on 3 December.

Dr. Godman: Has the Council considered the implications of the Falkland Island fisheries zone for EEC vessel activities?

Mr. MacKay: That was not raised at the last meeting.

Mr. Henderson: Although it is important to accept scientific evidence up to a point, does my hon. Friend agree that in negotiations with our European partners it is important to maintain the closest relationship with the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, which generally gives extremely good and wise advice to Ministers?

Mr. MacKay: Yes, I maintain very close contact with the Scottish fishing industry. As my hon. Friend rightly says, we must look to the future of the industry, not just to the year ahead in terms of total allowable catches, and so on, and to the long-term health of the stocks, which are so important to the future of the industry.

Urban Aid (Strathclyde)

Mr. Millan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions he has had with Strathclyde regional council about the urban aid programme.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Ancram): I met Strathclyde representatives last on this subject on 18 April 1986.

Mr. Millan: Will the Minister meet Strathclyde representatives again to discuss the very disturbing situation that has arisen? With regard to the suggestion in a recent Scottish Office report that there might be deliberate discrimination against urban aid projects from the west of Scotland, will he give an assurance that there is no such intention and that all projects, whether from the east or the west of Scotland, will be judged strictly on their merits? Will he also discuss the crisis arising from urban aid projects running out in the current year and the pernicious penalty system which means that Strathclyde now faces a burden of £13 million compared with £1½ million previously? Will he exclude the urban aid programme, at least, from the penalty system, as is the intention with teachers' pay?

Mr. Ancram: I have agreed to meet representatives of Strathclyde region in London on 2 December and I am sure that a number of the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman will come up again then. All projects put forward within the urban programme are considered strictly on their merits, within the limits set some 18 months ago after consultation with Strathclyde and Glasgow as to maximum planning figures for both those authorities. The right hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that in the past four years Strathclyde, taken as a whole with all its districts, has received about 80 per cent. of urban programme funding—both capital and current. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that. I am sure he will also welcome the fact that under this Government the amount of money being made available for the urban programme, both capital and current, is now double what it was in 1979.
On the question of penalties, the right hon. Gentleman knows that a disregard is, in fact, an increase in resources. All resources in that sector available for this year have already been allocated.

Mrs. McCurley: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is widespread discontent about the urban aid projects, many of which go straight into mainline finance when they finish, thus starving constituencies such as mine of vital resources?

Mr. Ancram: I accept the need to look carefully at projects funded through the urban programme. In the past two years we have attempted to tighten the criteria to ensure that only the best projects receive funding. The urban programme is based on a pump-priming principle and it is for the local authority to decide whether it wishes to take the projects on mainline.

Mr. James Hamilton: Will the Minister give us an assurance that the discussions that he intends to hold with Strathclyde regional council will be meaningful? He is, of course, aware that I wish two of the areas in my constituency to be mentioned—Harthill and Newmains, which are very deprived areas, with no social amenities whatsoever. Will he give those areas serious thought and consideration and ensure that, above all, the discussions are meaningful?

Mr. Ancram: The position in Strathclyde has not arisen out of the blue. Strathclyde knew that it was coming for at least the past two years. If it had wanted to take these programmes on mainline, it could have made spending provision to do so. After all, its estimate of the cost of the projects was £2·6 million. That must be set against a total guideline for this year of £1·2 billion for Strathclyde region.

Mr. Allan Stewart: Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mrs. McCurley), does my hon. Friend recall the representations that I made to him on the need to consult hon. Members about potentially controversial urban programme projects in their constituencies? When he meets representatives of Strathclyde region, will he ask them how many of their projects employ Labour councillors, or is that practice limited to my constituency?

Mr. Ancram: I note what my hon. Friend has said. I am sure that Strathclyde region will also have noted it and will wish to comment when we meet. I am concerned to ensure that only the best and most viable and innovative projects are funded by central taxpayers' money in this way. That is how I am trying to operate the urban programme.

Mr. Maxton: First, I hope that the Minister will ignore the cheap remarks by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mrs. McCurley) and by the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) about urban aid projects. Is the Minister aware that many of the projects employ many people and that they help many more very poor people in the poorest parts of Strathclyde? Unless he is prepared to disregard for penalty purposes the funding of these projects by Strathclyde region, when Government funding ceases many of them will close. That would cause considerable social distress throughout Strathclyde.

Mr. Ancram: When the projects are first put forward and sponsored by the local authorities, they are fully aware of the need to decide whether to take them on mainline at


the end of the period when they are funded by the urban programme. Strathclyde knew for at least two years that the urban programme funding for those projects would end this year. It was perfectly capable of making provision for them within its spending guidelines.

Prisons

Mr. Norman Hogg: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the design capacity of each of Her Majesty's prisons in Scotland and the present population of each institution.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): As the information can most conveniently be given in tabular form, I will arrange for this to be published in the Official Report.

Mr. Hogg: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. Is it the case that, in 1985, 47 per cent. of receptions to Scottish prisons were for default of payment of fines and that 52 per cent. of those going to prison were entering for a sentence of 30 days or less? What can be done to reduce those worrying figures?

Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman has identified a real problem. He will be aware that two or three years ago we introduced fines enforcement officers. It is hoped that they will lead to a reduction in the number of people admitted to prison for short periods. I accept what I believe is the hon. Gentleman's view; clearly it is highly undesirable that a person for whom the courts have found a fine to be an adequate punishment should end up in prison, although that position normally arises through failure to pay the fine that has been imposed.

Mr. McQuarrie: In regard to the design capacity of the proposed new Peterhead prison, will my right hon. and learned Friend place a copy of the plans in the library at Peterhead so that people in that part of my constituency can see the sort of prison that will be erected there, which we hope will be commenced in March 1987?

Mr. Rifkind: I shall be happy to ensure that the fullest possible information is made available to my hon. Friend and his constituents. Clearly the co-operation of the local community in the town of Peterhead is an important factor in developing the prison in that town.

Mr. O'Neill: Is the Secretary of State aware that there is a sort of Parkinson's law of penology which suggests that the space available will be filled by ever-increasing numbers of prisoners, and that we should be extremely careful about sanctioning any further extensions to our prison space? All that the Secretary of State will get is a larger prison population. Therefore, will the Secretary of State consider very carefully any plans that he has to extend prison populations by this method, and especially the siting of another facility in a place which is so far removed from the centre of Scotland as Peterhead?

Mr. Rifkind: When the second phase of Shotts prison is opened early next year, the capacity of the Scottish prison system will be greater than the number of people presently in Scottish prisons. Of course, there is still an imbalance, with significant overcapacity in young offenders' establishments and overcrowding in some adult establishments. We are trying to rationalise to ensure that all prison establishments are properly used.

Mr. Wilson: In relation to the recent disturbances at Saughton and Peterhead, is it within the remit of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons to consider the general question of congestion and what impact it has had in occasioning those disturbances? If not, will the Secretary of State ensure that the remit is expanded to include that?

Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman should be aware that in Peterhead the problem is not one of congestion. The design capacity of Peterhead is 281 and there are only 181 prisoners at Peterhead now. Whatever caused the problem, it clearly was not overcrowding.

Mr. Hirst: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the present overcrowding could be relieved by sending people convicted of drunk and disorderly offences to detoxification centres and hospitals rather than giving them prison sentences? Does he also agree that, given the present overcrowding, there is a place for Low Moss prison in Bishopbriggs? Will he take this opportunity to place on record his admiration for the work done at that prison during the recent period of uncertainty about the future?

Mr. Rifkind: I happily pay tribute to the staff of Low Moss. We have decided to keep open Low Moss, at least for a further year, because of the present position in the prison establishment. As a general principle, it is desirable to keep imprisonment for those for whom no alternative source of punishment is available to the courts. Ultimately, it is for the courts to decide whether imprisonment is appropriate in any case, but I agree with the principle that my hon. Friend has enunciated.

Mr. Hugh Brown: Before the Secretary of State places plans for the proposed new Peterhead prison in Peterhead library, or in any other library, will he suspend a decision until the Chief Inspector of Prisons reports? There must be the possibility of using capacity in the new Shotts prison.

Mr. Rifkind: Even when phase 2 of Shotts prison is opened, the need to refurbish two halls at Barlinnie will mean continued problems of overcrowding, although we hope only for a reasonably short time. I hope that the report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons will be available in the relatively near future. If it made fundamental recommendations such as the hon. Gentleman suggests, one could take them into account.

Mr. Tom Clarke: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman regret having paid little attention to the stringent criticisms of the Parole Board of Scotland in its annual report in July? Was it not a mistake to have changed the parole system on the basis of administrative diktat instead of having wide debate and discussion, especially in the House?

Mr. Rifkind: I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's point. Under the present rules the Parole Board can take into account any exceptional circumstances that it may believe to be appropriate in recommending to the Secretary of State that parole should he granted to an individual prisoner. It has exercised that discretion in some cases and is free to do so whenever it thinks it appropriate.

The following is the information:

Inmate Population on 4 November 1986


Prisons
Design Capacity
Population


Aberdeen
170
199


Barlinnie
943
1,292


Barlinnie Special Unit
8
5


Cornton Vale
178
149


Dumfries
143
144


Dungavel
146
143


Edinburgh
547
646


Friarton
85
68


Greenock
180
210


Inverness
88
118


Low Moss
400
350


Pennighame
75
73


Perth
532
597


Peterhead
281
181


Shotts
60
59


Total
3,836
4,234


Young Offenders Insititutions


Castle Huntly
114
103


Cornton Vale
41
34


Glenochil
496
366


Noranside
111
75


Polmont
410
381


Total
1,172
959


Detention Centre


Glenochil
182
142


Remand Unit


Longriggend
201
299


Grand Total
5,391
5,634

Aonach Mor (Ski Development)

Sir Russell Johnston: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what consideration his Department has given to providing assistance to the ski development at Aonach Mor in Lochaber; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Lang: A thorough assessment has been undertaken. We now await a response from the sponsoring bodies to the questions raised by the Industry Department for Scotland.

Sir Russell Johnston: Such a response is on its way to the Minister. Is he aware that there is great disappointment in Lochaber that the delay in reaching a decision has already cost a year of this project? Can the Minister assure me that, in making the decision, he will take into account not only the notional cost per job but the economic activity in Lochaber, and more widely in Scotland, which the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the Scottish Development Agency believe the scheme would generate?

Mr. Lang: We shall certainly take those points into account. When I tell the hon. Gentleman that the proportion of public funding for this project would be about 84 per cent.—£4·8 million out of a total cost of £5·7 million—and that the cost per job would be a minimum of about £60,000, and possibly as much as £80,000, he will realise that it is important to study the matter closely.

Sir Hector Monro: Does my hon. Friend agree that there are few places in Scotland where regular skiing is possible? That being so, will he do everything that he can, through the Highlands and Islands Development Board, the Scottish Development Agency and local authorities, in consultation with conservation bodies, to provide better skiing facilities in Scotland in the interests of tourism and so that the Scots can have good recreational facilities themselves?

Mr. Lang: We are keen to encourage the development of skiing in the north of Scotland wherever this can reasonably be achieved. We must consider such development closely, since so much public funding is required for a specific project.

Mr. Ron Brown: Ski development at Lochaber or elsewhere may be important, but is it not barbaric that prisoners Kinnon and Smith are placed in cages—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is a further question to which the hon. Gentleman could easily attach that supplementary question. He cannot attach it to the question that is now before the House.

Council of Fisheries Ministers (Quota)

Mr. McQuarrie: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he intends to have discussions with the Scottish fishermen's organisations on the quota decision taken at the recent Council of Ministers meeting.

Mr. John MacKay: I met representatives of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation on 19 November, when we discussed among other matters the decision taken at the last Council of Ministers meeting enabling the Commission to close a fishery when the total allowable catch is exhausted.

Mr. McQuarrie: I hope that my hon. Friend will continue to meet the Scottish fishermen's organisations to discuss this matter. Is he aware that the proposal to grant power to EEC officials to ban fishing once an allocation has been exceeded is abhorrent to the fishermen in my constituency and in the rest of Scotland? Is he aware also of what will happen when TACs are exceeded by other member states? The answer is that the penal effect will bear only on Scottish fishermen who continue to look after their total allowable catch? Will my hon. Friend explain how compensation is to be paid and how the fish will be collected?

Mr. MacKay: The fishermen who came to see me expressed the same points as my hon. Friend has mentioned. If we are to conserve stocks and ensure that the total allowable catch is not exceeded, there must be some mechanism to ensure that those who exceed their quota are punished. The proposal is that the Commission will punish them in the following year by taking some of their catch from them and giving it to those who suffered because of the over-fishing. I think that that is sensible. It punishes the offender and compensates the person who suffers. Above all, it conserves the stocks.

Community Charge

Mr. Home Robertson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received from local authorities concerning the proposed community charge.

Mr. Rifkind: In addition to a response from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, I received 37 responses from individual local authorities on the Green Paper and on the subsequent Scottish Office paper on operational issues.

Mr. Home Robertson: How have the Government managed to come up with a system of local taxation that will be even more arbitrary than the rating system? As the Secretary of State for the Environment told the House on 17 November that under a poll tax people would pay the same bill for a given level of service, how can it be that someone on the Island of Mull, who might have access to limited levels of local services, will have to pay the same regional poll tax as someone who enjoys all the benefits of life in places such as Bearsden or Eastwood?

Mr. Rifkind: I am interested to note that the hon. Gentleman concedes that the rating system is arbitrary. As one of the Opposition's spokesmen on agriculture, I hope that he will seek to persuade his party not to impose rating on agricultural property, which he knows would devastate Scotland's agricultural economy.
The hon. Gentleman has spoken about the effect of the community charge. He knows that if those living on Mull or in Bearsden were to live under the same regional authority, they would receive similar regional services. It would be the responsibility of the regional council to provide services. Under our accountable system, it would be for the electorate to determine whether the level of services should be increased, reduced or remain the same.

Mr. Fletcher: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the majority of those who pay domestic rates in Scotland are eagerly awaiting the publication of a Bill that will distribute the cost of local authority services more evenly among those who use them?

Mr. Rifkind: Indeed, yes. As my hon. Friend will be aware, it is interesting to note that among those who have welcomed the proposals for a community charge and the Government's other proposals are the ratepayers associations in Scotland, the chambers of commerce, which represent small businesses, and the CBI in Scotland, which represents industry. These organisations have all given a full welcome to the Government's proposals. As they represent pretty well all the ratepayers of Scotland, that is something from which we can take great satisfaction.

Mr. Maclennan: Has the Secretary of State calculated what proportion of total local authority expenditure will be constituted, on average, by the community charge?

Mr. Rifkind: It will be broadly that proportion of local authority expenditure that is presently funded by domestic rates.

Mr. Forth: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that this long overdue reform is being watched eagerly by people south of the border to see how successful it is, so that we can follow Scotland as quickly as possible? Does my right hon. and learned Friend realise the burden of responsibility that he carries in that regard? Will he take with him my best wishes, and the best wishes of my constituents and everyone south of the border, in making this a very successful measure?

Mr. Rifkind: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks, and I think that I can cheer him up even more. My right

hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has made it clear that legislation will be introduced to enact similar provisions for England, even before the Scottish measure has come into effect.

Mr. MacKenzie: Is the Secretary of State aware that the list that he read out of friends who support the community charge is very small indeed compared with the number of ratepayers who forcefully demonstrated during the last municipal elections that they did not like the idea at all? The right hon. and learned Gentleman should drop this pernicious tax. Why are we in Scotland to be punished when the people of England and Wales will not be punished in this way?

Mr. Rifkind: I have just said that similar proposals are to be implemented for England and Wales, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has made clear. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that one of the basic defects of the present electoral system is that a substantial proportion of the electorate make no financial contribution to the revenue of local authorities through the present rating system. Therefore, it is not surprising that they should be happy to vote for high spending.

Sir Hector Monro: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it cannot be fair that a widow in a small bungalow should have to pay the same rates as another household where four wage earners are living? The sooner the leglislation is enacted, the better. It will be warmly welcomed by many householders in Scotland.

Mr. Rifkind: It is interesting that the Labour party, which is now the only political party in Scotland that wishes to keep the present domestic rating system, seems to equate Socialism with the outcome that my hon. Friend has just described.

Crofters (Rating)

Mr. Donald Stewart: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received regarding the position of crofters under the Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act 1956 in so far as it relates to the reduction from gross to net value in the valuation of their houses, in the context of the proposed legislation on the abolition of domestic rates in Scotland.

Mr. Ancram: My right hon. and learned Friend has received representations on this matter from the Western Isles islands council, the Crofters Commission, the National Farmers Union of Scotland, the Scottish Crofters Union and the Harris Council of Social Service, as well as from a number of individuals in the crofting areas.

Mr. Stewart: I thank the Minister for his reply. Is he aware that the arrangement for rating crofts has been accepted for a long time by all Administrations as being fully justified and essential, and that if it is changed as a result of the legislation there will be severe social and economic consequences? There will be no incentive whatever for crofts to remain in the outlying areas of the islands or mainland.

Mr. Ancram: I listened to the right hon. Gentleman, but he is as aware as I am that the reliefs at present attach to property, and that the Green Paper's proposals suggest the abolition of a property tax and its replacement with a


personal community charge. A community charge will be much simpler, in that there will be a flat rate per adult, with a rebate available through the social security system to protect those on low incomes. The right hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that, on this year's expenditure, a community charge in the Western Isles would be about half the average applied in mainland Scotland.

Mr. Michael Forsyth: Will my hon. Friend confirm that because of lower incomes and the narrowness of the tax base in the crofting areas, a local income tax, as suggested by the SNP and the alliance, would have a catastrophic effect on Crofters and would add a substantial burden to the amount that they would have to pay in income tax?

Mr. Ancram: I agree with my hon. Friend.

Mr. McKelvey: Does the Minister recall that I recently sent him a letter on behalf of a crofter in the rural area of Kilmarnock and Loudoun? That crofter is complaining that he does not qualify for the crofters grant because he is not in the designated area. Why is the Minister discriminating against my crofters?

Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is always helpful. We can end this discrimination by removing the property tax element of local government financing and introducing a community charge.

Pupils (Expenditure)

Mr. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will estimate the expenditure per pupil in Scottish schools for the year 1987–88, indicating the comparable figures in real terms for 1977–78.

Mr. Rifkind: In 1977–78 actual expenditure by local authorities per pupil was £883. The provision made for schools in the 1987–88 rate support grant settlement represents an expenditure of £1,332 per pupil. The figures are at 1984–85 prices.

Mr. Henderson: Will my right hon and learned Friend say whether these figures are reflected in better pupil-teacher ratios over the same period and state the extent to which teachers pay is also included?

Mr. Rifkind: Yes, I can confirm that pupil-teacher ratios, both for secondary and primary schools, have improved during the period in question.

Mr. Steel: In view of the decline in pupil numbers over the decade, will the Secretary of State tell us what in real terms, has been the reduction of expenditure on school maintenance during those years?

Mr. Rifkind: I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman a specific figure at this moment. Undoubtedly one of the problems that educational authorities are experiencing is the result of the disinclination to close half-empty schools. They are having to spend a substantial proportion of resources on the maintenance and heating of buildings when those resources could otherwise be used for text books or educational materials, which would be of more immediate benefit to their pupils.

Mr. Dewar: I am sure the Secretary of State will accept that the overwhelming aspect of the educational scene is the teachers' pay dispute. According to information that has reached me, in an 89 per cent. poll the EIS membership

voted against his proposition by 84 cent. to 16 per cent.? Does this not underline the tragic blunder that he made in refusing to honour the essential financial recommedations made in Main?
Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that he must take responsiblity for a situation that could easily lead to the return of confrontation and disruption? Will he now accept that it is essential that Ministers allow negotiations between employers and teachers to start? An agreement is infinitely preferable to any imposed solution that could never command goodwill. In view of this overwhelming vote, will he accept that the worst possible result will occur if Ministers maintain their present die-hard stance and pupils are inevitably asked to pay a price for that obstinacy.

Mr. Rifkind: I have yet to receive any official notification of the figures. Therefore, one would clearly wish to consider them when they are made available. I think the hon. Gentleman will be the first to admit that Scottish teachers have been offered one of the most generous settlements that have been offered in the public sector in recent years.
If it is the case that the EIS has rejected the Government's proposals, and if it is the case that, at the recent general meeting, the leadership appeared to reject the Main report, at this stage it would appear that the only thing that has been voted for is a renewal of disruption in schools. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that Scottish parents and the Scottish public would find that result inexplicable and unacceptable, particularly if it arises out of the Government's offer, which, as I have said, is the most generous offer in the public sector in recent years.

Rates

Mr. Bruce: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received about the proposed legislation to replace rates.

Mr. Ancram: My right hon. and learned Friend received about 750 representations during the consultation period on the Green Paper "Paying for Local Government" and the Scottish Office paper on operational issues. Further representations have been received since the end of the formal consultation periods.

Mr. Bruce: Will the Minister acknowledge that among those representations there is genuine concern about the implications of replacing the existing system with a poll tax or a community charge, first, because of the administrative difficulties associated with it and, secondly—and he received these representations from Grampian regional council even when it was under Conservative control—because the system will adversely affect the young and pensioner couples and is much more repressive than local income tax? Does he agree that the Labour party's position of opposing both the existing system and the Government's alternative is wholly untenable, given that it has no policy of its own?

Mr. Ancram: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has read the Green Paper, so he must be aware that among those who will gain from the community charge are single pensioners and single-parent families. Given what he has said in the past about those categories, I am sure that he will welcome that. We have looked closely at the representations that have been made to us about the administration of the community charge and when the Bill


is introduced the hon. Gentleman will see that we have taken account of many representations. I know that he supports a system of local income tax with an equalisation grant to make it work fairly. That surprises me, as the area that he represents in Grampian region would cross-subsidise other areas. I am sure that that would not be welcomed in his constituency.

Mr. Allan Stewart: Is my hon. Friend aware that I have received an enormous number of representations from elderly and single people in places such as Newton Mearns and Giffnock who are in favour of the community charge? I know that my hon. Friend does not pay much attention to opinion polls, but he may have seen a recent one showing a huge swing to the Conservative party. Could that be because more people are now recognising the Government's determination to push through the community charge Bill?

Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House about the most recent opinion poll. Usually alter the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) has mentioned the previous one we go up six points in the poll the next day. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is worth reminding the House that under the community charge proposals single pensioners will do particularly well. Over 85 per cent. of them will gain, and of those, 30 per cent. stand to gain over £1 a week. Other single adult households will fare well, with 18 per cent. gaining and of those more than half gaining more than £1 a week. Within that last group are one-parent families. More than 80 per cent. of them will gain from the community charge, with about half of those gaining more than £1 a week. I am sure that that will be welcomed by all those categories and by the House in general.

Mr. Eadie: Which Scottish local authorities have responded favourably to the proposed legislation? If it is such a wonderful idea, why is there not a Bill running in tandem with this legislation to make the same wonderful provision for England and Wales?

Mr. Ancram: My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has already made it clear that our hon. Friends in England intend to follow this path next year. That is the timetable that they have set themselves. It is hardly surprising that Scottish local authorities have opposed the community charge proposals, because at present they have a cosy arrangement under which only a minority of their electors pay for their spending decisions. I would be extremely surprised if local authorities were willing to give that up easily.

Mr. John Mark Taylor: Does my hon. Friend agree that the community charge is no more arbitrary than the circumstances in which we all pay the same price for a postage stamp, and that the capitation charge is much closer to the present regime, being a tax on the consumption of services? Does he further agree that we have quite enough tax on income?

Mr. Ancram: Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. It is also worth remembering that the community charge will finance only about 13 per cent. of local government expenditure in Scotland. Fifty-nine per cent. will continue to be financed by the central taxpayer through rate support grant and rebates, where the ability to pay is fully recognised.

Mr. Maxton: Will the Minister answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) and say how many local authorities in Scotland have approved of the scheme, how many officials who will have to administer it have approved of it, and how many other professional bodies who are involved have approved of it? Will he also tell the House what percentage of householders in Scotland are widows who are paying rates at present?

Mr. Ancram: A number of authorities have said that they support general or specific parts of the proposals. It would be surprising if local authorities were prepared to give up a system which at the moment works wholly and exclusively to their advantage and to the disadvantage of ratepayers. It is the ratepayers about whom we are concerned. I find it surprising that the hon. Gentleman does not regard single parents and single pensioners as vulnerable sections of the community who deserve the protection that the community charge would give them.

Firth of Clyde (Fisheries)

Mr. Lambie: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has any intention to review the inshore limits within which trawlers can fish in the Firth of Clyde.

Mr. John MacKay: There are no fishing limits in the Firth of Clyde, but there is a ban on vessels over 70ft fishing for white fish. We have no plans at present to review that ban, although we have discussed the matter with interested fishermen's organisations.

Mr. Lambie: Is the Minister aware that when the Saltcoats Sea Angling Association recently held its annual sea angling competition, I was not able to hand over the first prize of about £2,000 because that prize was for the heaviest cod and not one cod was caught. In order to protect the activities of the sea angling industry in the Firth of Clyde, is the Minister prepared to ban trawlers from fishing within the present limits, which are there no matter what the Minister says?

Mr. MacKay: Obviously I am sorry to hear that the hon. Gentleman was not able to present the prize. Perhaps if he had invited a better quality of angler to the competition they might have done better. I appreciate that sea anglers wish to catch fish and that historically the Clyde has a good record on cod. I could not agree to banning commerical fishermen from the Firth of Clyde, many of whom are my constituents. It would be quite wrong, and I see no reason to do that.

Mr. McQuarrie: My hon. Friend should be aware that the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) was referring to an international angling conference and that over 1,000 people took part in it. They did not catch one white fish. My hon. Friend should look at that matter to see whether there is the possibility of having some form of restriction to allow anglers at least to catch fish.

Mr. MacKay: I always accept the advice of my hon. Friend on fishing matters. Indeed, if the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) wishes to write to me and draw my attention to the competition and when it took place, I shall look into the matter. I have to reinforce what I just said. I do not believe that we should consider banning the Clyde fishermen from the traditional fishing which they have always had in the Firth of Clyde.

Prison Officers

Dr. Godman: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current ratio of prison officers to prisoners in each of the Scottish prisons; and what was the corresponding ratio in 1980.

Mr. Lang: I shall arrange to have the figures for each establishment published in the Official Report. The overall ratio is 1:2·07 compared with 1:2·14 in 1980.

Dr. Godman: What effects do staff turnover rates have on those ratios? Is the Minister satisfied with the recruitment, selection and training of recruits to the service, and does he agree that there seems to be a thousand times more formal job security for a prison officer than for a shipyard worker, especially if the latter works at Scott Lithgow? I hope that his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State will agree to a meeting with me to discuss today's announcement by Scott Lithgow concerning the massive number of people who are to be made redundant.

Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is very inventive in his supplementary question. Close attention is given to the training of prison officers. They have a six-week initial course and a further week a short time after. That seems to meet most of the basic requirements for training. Great care is taken in the matter.

Mr. Ron Brown: Is it not clear that Messrs Smith and Kinnon are being placed in cages in Inverness as punishment for the recent protest at Saughton prison? Is that not barbaric? As Mr. Smith is one of my constituents, I am entitled to speak about him. Is it not also an abuse of human rights or is it simply a question of Victorian values coming to the fore and the Government, who talk about enlightenment, really putting the boot in, not just for prison officers but for prisoners themselves?

Mr. Lang: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that the ratio of prison officers to inmates in Inverness is 1:1·64, which is a considerable improvement, even on the Scottish average.

Following is the information:

The following table shows the ratio of prison officers to prisoners in each penal establishment in Scotland as at the beginning of November 1980 and 1986:


Establishment
1980 Ratio of prison offices:inmates
1986 Ratio of prison officers:inmates


Aberdeen
1:2·19
1:2·65


Barlinnie
1:3·02
1:3·63


Barlinnie Special Unit
1:0·40
1:0·36


Castle Huntly
1:2·00
1:1·91


Cornton Vale
1:0·76
1:107


Dumfries
1:1·60
1:1·57


Dungavel
1:2·55
1:2·80


Edinburgh
1:2·77
1:2·04


Friarton
1:1·76
1:1·42


Glenochil
1:2·14
1:1·68


Greenock
1:0·64
1:1·96


Inverness
1:1·37
1:1·64


Longriggend
1:2·79
1:2·18


Low Moss
1:3·65
1:3·50


Noranside
1:1·27
1:1·53


Penninghame
1:1·77
1:2·70


Perth
1:2·80
1:2·49


Peterhead
1:1·19
1:0·76


Polmont
1:1·86
1:2·01


Shotts
1:0·94
1:0·69

Notes:

1. 'Prison Officer' includes all uniformed discipline staff up to the rank of Chief Officer I and Specialist Officers (nurses, caterers, works officers, clerk officers and instructors) who assume an element of discipline duties.

2. Non-uniformed staff (including Governor grades, civilian instructional staff, civilian tradesmen and secretarial staff) are excluded from the calculation of ratios.

Education

Mr. Hirst: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the action which he is taking to promote peace, stability and progress in Scotland's schools.

Mr. John MacKay: I refer my hon. Friend to the statement on the Main report made by my right hon. and learned Friend on 30 October.

Mr. Hirst: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that the position of the SSTA, in seeking negotiations with Ministers rather than resorting to strike action, is infinitely preferable to the position of the other union, which has threatened to impose disruptive and vexatious action on schools in Scotland as a result of strikes?

Mr. MacKay: I agree with my hon. Friend. The SSTA came to talk to my Department about a number of specific concerns. I would be delighted if the EIS would like similar discussions, but the position remains that the formal negotiations are with the Scottish joint negotiating committee, and we have urged all along that the negotiations should take place.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: If the EIS ballot result is as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) has suggested, will the Secretary of State cease to adopt this holier-than-thou attitude in blaming everybody but himself for the teachers' situation? Does he not recognise that if he does not exercise some flexibility and humility in these matters, the fault for the ensuing strike will be his and not the teachers'?

Mr. MacKay: I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman, although I am not in the least surprised to hear him make such an accusation. Obviously, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and I will have to study the details of the ballot, but although there has been a no vote, as I understand it, that leaves the door open to negotiations, and that is what we are urging. Surely that is what all parents will want.

Mr. Dewar: I am glad the Minister has said that he would welcome negotiations. All of us, particularly in the light of what appears to be an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the Government's proposals, want to find a way forward—certainly every Labour Member wants to do so. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that we, too, want to see negotiations started? However, the Minister cannot argue that there should be negotiations while imposing on negotiations conditions so restrictive as to mean that they have to produce the same result as the offer that has been rejected. On what basis will the Minister welcome negotiations, and on what basis, and with what remit, will he allow the parties to sit down at the negotiating table?

Mr. MacKay: If the hon. Gentleman were to re-read what my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State said on 30 October, he would see the basis on which


we can move ahead. However, it is clear that the overall cost laid down by my right hon. and learned Friend and the timing of the two phases of the pay increase are not negotiable, but that still leaves a good deal of room for manoeuvre. The SSTA clearly felt that when it came to discuss this. Within these parameters, we can discuss something, and something could be negotiated on the SJNC.

Sir Russell Johnston: Is the Minister aware that that is not good enough and that he must now admit that the Government were wrong to break up the Main proposals? Is not the only hope of securing some peace to recognise this, because the outcome of that ballot has been a devastating rejection of the Minister's proposals?

Mr. MacKay: The hon. Gentleman says that, but he may recall that EIS meetings were rejecting the Main proposals before my right hon. and learned Friend's statement on 30 October. I understand that part of the ballot rejects the Main proposals. The EIS has gone a long way to throw out the proposals of this independent committee. My right hon. and learned Friend made it clear that we accept the main points of this proposal. Our only point is that the overall cost and the timing in two phases have to be within the terms of the statement by my right hon. and learned Friend.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We started with a point of order and I have allowed injury time on this question. We have three questions to the Solicitor-General for Scotland, so we may be able to return to question 14 if there is time.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOLICITOR-GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND

Duke of Argyll

Mr. Canavan: asked the Solicitor-General for Scotland what action has been taken by the Crown Office following the complaint of illegal fishing by the Duke of Argyll or his associates.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland (Mr. Peter Fraser): No proceedings have been instructed, but the trustees of the tenth Duke of Argyll have been advised that Crown counsel consider the method of fishing used on Loch Shira is illegal. I understand they are now seeking legal advice.

Mr. Canavan: In view of the complaint submitted last month by Jimmy Reid, is it not a glaring case of double standards for the Tory Government to introduce Draconian legislation in the House of Lords to penalise working-class poachers when a member of the other place is allowed to indulge in illegal net fishing on Loch Fyne near Inverary castle? Is it not another glaring example of double standards for the procurator fiscal at Dunoon to tell the Glasgow Herald that he submits cases involving the hierarchy to the Crown Office in Edinburgh? Is there one law for the dukes and another for the rest of us? The whole thing looks distinctly fishy to me.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: The hon. Gentleman's pun was certainly predictable. As I said, Crown counsel have said that in their view the method of fishing used on Loch Shira, part of Loch Fyne, is illegal. That method of fishing has been used at that location throughout the century without challenge and there has been nothing surreptitious about it. Thousands of tourists have seen it happening. There is no salmon fishing going

on at the moment. There should not be anywhere in Scotland because of the regional restrictions, but it has been made clear to us that if, following a consideration of the particular legal situation in Loch Shira, that method of fishing is found to be illegal, it is not intended to resume it.

Mr. Soames: Has my hon. and learned Friend received any complaints about illegal fishing by the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) and his associates?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: No, Mr. Speaker. I have received none at all.

Mr. Buchan: The Solicitor-General said that now that the Duke of Argyll has been found to have behaved illegally he has promised not to do it again if the case is dropped. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman apply that to the full range of criminal actions?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: The hon. Gentleman should listen. I said that the Duke of Argyll has been advised that Crown counsel take the view that the particular form of fishing there is illegal. As the hon. Gentleman might appreciate if he knew anything about fishing in Scotland, a variety of techniques are used and various——

Mr. Buchan: May I go out and break a window?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: If the hon. Gentleman really wants an answer I shall give it to him.
Specialties apply to fishing in various parts of Scotland. The trustees' legal advisers have said that they will look at the matter and in the meantime they have said that there will be no resumption of the fishing there.

Mr. Fairbairn: May I ask the Solicitor-General this matter? Since the last time a Duke of Argyll was beheaded it was on the orders of the English, by a machine called "The Maiden", without evidence, would it not at least be reasonable for the Scots not to attempt to prosecute another one when there is no evidence either?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: I can only repeat to my hon. and learned Friend that, following the information that was given to us, we have looked at the matter. There is nothing surreptitious about what is being done. If the hon. Gentleman had ever been to Lock Fyne he would appreciate that thousands of tourists have stood and watched this activity in the past. Nothing has been concealed from anyone. If, technically speaking, the manner that is being deployed is illegal, that will not be resumed.

Mr. Home Robertson: Since the procurator fiscal at Dunoon evidently understood that it was his duty to refer the case to his superiors in Edinburgh on the grounds that the Duke of Argyll was a member of the hierarchy, will the Solicitor-General give clear instructions to procurators fiscal throughout Scotland to deal with all alleged offenders equally?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: As the hon. Gentleman ought to appreciate, where there are cases involving any difficulty, particularly those relating to ancient fishing rights and those in which particular specialties may be involved, it is only sensible that they should be referred to the Crown Office. I seem to recall that on previous occasions the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends took exception to the fact that such difficult


matters were not reported to the Crown Office. In particular, in relation to the miners' strike I was enjoined to make sure that exactly that happened.

Prosecution Policy (Procurators Fiscal)

Mr. Henderson: asked the Solicitor-General for Scotland if he will arrange for regular meetings with the procurators fiscal to discuss prosecution policies.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: Prosecution policy is discussed at monthly meetings between the Crown Agent and regional procurators fiscal who, in turn, meet regularly with their district fiscals. Additionally, the law officers and the Crown Agent visit individual procurators fiscal in their offices from time to time and meet them in the Crown Office.

Mr. Henderson: Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that his meeting on Saturday with solicitors in Cupar was extremely useful? Is he able to say whether complaints against police and prison officers, while being rigorously pursued, could result in prosecutions if they are found to be malicious or frivolous?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: Yes. Particular arrangements are set out for complaints that are made against the police. They are dealt with at local level and they are also reported to the Crown Office. By the same token, to ensure that we are even handed, if the view is taken that the complaint is malicious or is wasting the time of the police, in turn the complaint, if there is sufficient evidence against him, may find himself being prosecuted.

Mr. Pollock: Is my hon. and learned Friend able to tell the House whether are not the fiscal's offices within the sheriffdom of Grampian and the Highlands are adequately staffed for the purposes required of them?

The Solicitor-General of Scotland: At present, there is no significant shortfall of either legal or non-legal staff within the area. There are certain problems with regard to accommodation in fiscal offices in Scotland, though not particularly in Grampian. However, where there are deficiencies, we hope that shortly they will be remedied.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Licensing

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report all the organisations that have received the consultation paper on the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976; and when he hopes to make a statement in response to representations received.

Mr. Lang: Yes, Sir. Copies of the consultation paper have also been placed in the Library of the House. The closing date for comments is July 1987 and a statement will be made after they have been fully considered.

Mr. Brown: I do not know whether the Minister was as surprised as I was that this question was reached, but it means that I do not have a carefully rehearsed supplementary. However, is it not far too leisurely that the consultation period should be to the end of July on a consultation paper that is of no great significance in any case?

Mr. Lang: Given the wide range of interests that are involved, it is probably appropriate to have a fairly

leisurely period of consultation. At the end of that period, I hope that we shall be that much better equipped to react to the consultation process.
Following is the information:

List of Organisation in Receipt of Consultative Document on the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976
Alcohol Studies Centre
Association of Chief Police Officers (Scotland)
Association of Scottish Chambers of Commerce
Association of Superintendents of Police (Scotland)
Baptist Union
Bishop's Conference of Scotland
Boy Scouts' Association
Brewers' Association of Scotland
Brewers' Society
British Airports Authority
British Hotels, Restaurants and Caterers Association (Scottish Division)
BP Petroleum Development Limited
Catering Managers' Association of Great Britain
Church of Scotland
Confederation of British Industry (Scotland)
Congregational Union of Scotland
Council on Alcohol (Belfast)
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
Educational Institute of Scotland
Episcopal Church in Scotland
Faculty of Advocates
Federation of Scottish Junior Chambers of Commerce
Free Church of Scotland
Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland
Girls' Brigade and Boys' Brigade
Girl Guides Association
Headteachers Association of Scotland
Highlands and Islands Development Board
International Distillers and Vintners
Jewish Faith
Law Society of Scotland
Local Authorities in Scotland
London Clubs Limited
Lords Day Observance Society
Mecca Limited
Methodist Church in Scotland
National Federation of Licenced House Managers
National Consumer Council
National Federation of Self Employed and Small Businesses
Rank Leisure Services
Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland
Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain
Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons
Royal College of Psychiatrists
Salvation Army
Scottish Airports Limited
Scottish Conservative party
Scottish Consumer Council
Scottish Council for Civil Liberties
Scottish Council on Alcohol
Scottish Grocers' Federation
Scottish Health Education Group
Scottish Labour Party
Scottish Law Agents Society
Scottish Law Commission
Scottish Liberal Party
Scottish Licensed Trade Association
Scottish National Party
Scottish Police Federation
Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association
Scottish Social Democratic Party
Scottish Tourist Board
Scottish Trades Union Congress
Scottish Transport Group
Sheriffs' Association
Strathclyde Licensed Trade Association
United Free Church of Scotland
United Kingdom Bartenders Guild
Working Men's Clubs and Institutes Union Limited

Mr. Speaker: Private notice question.

Several Hon. Members: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I shall take points of order after the private notice question.

Invisible Trade (Statistics)

Mr. John Smith: (by private notice) asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the Government's recalculation of invisibles in the trade figures to show a higher surplus.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Michael Howard): Statistics of invisible trade are compiled by the Central Statistical Office, mainly from quarterly and annual surveys of businesses and individuals engaged in invisible trade transactions. This information becomes available much less frequently than the corresponding information for visible trade. Estimates of the invisible balance for the third quarter of 1986 and the month of October were calculated by the statisticians of the Central Statistical Office on the basis of the latest information available to them.

Mr. Smith: Were the Government concerned to read the report in today's edition of the Financial Times which said:
but the large revisions in the invisibles came as a surprise and were greeted with widespread scepticism in the City"?
Is it not disturbing that scepticism should exist about figures on which the markets crucially depend and the integrity of which, in any proper system, ought to be beyond question? Given the Government's record on the manipulation of unemployment statistics, ought they not to be especially careful that their previous convictions do not run before them in this area?
Why did the Government depart from the practice of waiting for the figures that will be available to the Central Statistical Office on 4 December, which is only two weeks away, upon which a more justifiable revision could be made and which until now has been the standard practice?
As the Minister will be aware, the revision upwards of invisibles of about £200 million in each month over a three-month period, which leaves October out of account, gives a large increase of about £600 million. Can the Government give the basis for their confidence that these increases have occurred? Why have they occurred? On the assumption that the Government's forecasts are correct, would it not have been more prudent to have announced prior to the publication of the detailed figures that an upward revision of invisibles was at hand? That would have been better than offering an explanation after the event, especially since the upward revision has the convenient effect of changing a deficit into a surplus.
In order to restore confidence in the figures, and bearing in mind the heavy reliance placed on increases in invisibles in the Chancellor's autumn statement, would it not be desirable next time to produce more detailed justification for the calculation of invisibles and to show them in future announcements so that the scepticism that this month's experience has clearly engendered does not recur?

Mr. Howard: Unlike the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I read with a degree of scepticism some of the newspaper reports on these matters. These changes were made because it became clear to the statisticians of the Central Statistical Office that they were changes of a magnitude that ought to be drawn to the attention of the public. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is in any

way alleging that these figures were doctored by the statisticians of the Central Statistical Office, I hope that he will make that allegation in the clearest possible terms.
We are accustomed to the Opposition finding failure where there is none. Will they now stop sniping at the success represented by these figures for invisible balances? The right hon. and learned Gentleman is widely respected in the House. At this advanced stage of his career, there is no need for him to start modelling himself on his hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott).

Sir William Clark: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that every time we have good news about the economy the Opposition make wild and frivolous accusations and do not bear in mind that the Government do not produce these figures but that they are produced by the CSO? Does he also agree that the increase in our invisible earnings is due to the increased investment that we have put abroad since 1979, and that invisible foreign earnings are as good foreign earners as manufacturing industry?

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend is right. The trouble with the Opposition is that they cannot bear to see good news and desire to misrepresent it whenever it appears.

Mr. Paddy Ashdown: The Minister ought to accept that the scepticism is not just on this side of the House but is in the City as well, as the figures clearly show. Will he address the fact that the figures he has produced do not engender confidence in the City and that that cannot be good for him or for the figures? Is he aware that today's report in the Financial Times used the rather Delphic statement that the statisticians had detected some buoyancy but could not say where or how that buoyancy had taken place? Can the Minister tell us where and how it has taken place and, if possible, whether this convenient buoyancy will take place again?

Mr. Howard: I do not for a moment accept that scepticism is widespread, particularly in the City. Indeed, it is due in no small part to the City's performance over the period in question that the figures for invisibles have improved.

Mr. Anthony Nelson: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it is quite extraordinary that when a trade deficit is announced the Opposition blame the Government's economic policies, but when a trade surplus is announced they accuse the Government of fiddling the figures? Is it not clear to everyone that it is not the Government but the Opposition who are in need of some creative accounting in support of their economic policy?

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Opposition are quite unwilling to recognise good news when it is thrust before them.

Dr. Jeremy Bray: Is the Minister aware that adding up the surpluses and deficits for all industrial countries shows that there is a large and unexplained deficit, which if allocated proportionately amounts to about £2 billion a year for the United Kingdom? This has been known for years. Can he explain the suspicious circumstances as to why this should apparently he corrected just at the moment when the balance of payments is in deficit?

Mr. Howard: I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not hold me responsible for statistics of this kind that are produced for the world as a whole. My responsibilities are much more limited, and all I am doing is reporting the fact that the figures that have been questioned by the Opposition were produced by the statisticians of the Central Statistical Office. If any charge is to be made against them, I hope that it will be made in the clearest terms.

Mr. John Townend: Is not one of the reasons for the increase in invisible earnings the recovery in tourist earnings that we have seen in recent months? To what extent will the pessimistic noises from the Opposition affect the value of the pound?

Mr. Howard: I think that the markets are sufficiently used to the antics of the Opposition to be able to take their comments in the appropriate spirit.

Mr. Bruce Milian: Will the Minister answer the question that he has avoided so far? Why has the publication of these figures been brought forward and done in advance? For example, will he give a previous occasion on which figures which have been deteriorating have been announced in advance?

Mr. Howard: I did answer that question. The point is that there became evident to the statisticians large changes that they thought it right to bring to the attention of the public in the context of these figures. That is why they have been produced in this way. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that inaccurate figures should be put forward knowing them to be inaccurate and without making an attempt to reflect the most up-to-date information available.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the House has witnessed yet again the Opposition taking an opportunity to denigrate the City and to ignore the very great export potential for invisibles?

Mr. Howard: I fear that the Opposition's inclination for denigration goes far wider than the City. The invisibles sector of our economy is by no means limited to the City, and it is right that its good performance should be drawn to the attention of the nation.

Mr. Robert Sheldon: Did the statisticians insist that their latest figures be incorporated within the trade statistics?

Mr. Howard: I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the Government ought to have told the statisticians to take their figures back.

Mr. Alex Fletcher: Can my hon. and learned Friend confirm that there has been no change in the relationship between Department of Trade Ministers and the Government's professional statisticians, as the same statisticians provided figures for the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) when he was a trade Minister?

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend tempts me, but I fear that I cannot say what the relationship was between the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his statisticians. All I can

say is that these figures come from the statisticians, were brought forward by them and were not subject to any interference whatever by Ministers.

Mr. Derek Fatchett: The Minister has attributed this change to the work of the statisticians in the Central Statistical Office. Has there been a previous occasion when the statisticians have revised the figures, in one case by one third upwards and by 50 per cent. upwards in relation to the October figures? That surely shows that there was a major error in the first place.

Mr. Howard: As I have said, the information about invisibles becomes available at less frequent intervals than does that for visibles. When it becomes available, it is right and proper that the statisticians should bring forward the most up-to-date information so that that is within the knowledge of the public. That is what has happened on this occasion. It is a pity that Opposition Members cannot recognise good news when they hear it.

Mr. Ian Gow: Is it not clear that my hon. and learned Friend and the Department have in no way interfered with the statistics that came from the Central Statistical Office? Is it not also clear from these exchanges that it is the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry who apparently would fiddle the figures?

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that there is no question of anyone fiddling anything.

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Speaker: Order. In the interests of Christmas, and good order, I think that the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) should rephrase the word "fiddling". I do not think that he intended to suggest that the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) was a fiddler.

Mr. Gow: I think that the implication of the private notice question asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) was that my hon. and learned Friend had in fact done that.

Mr. Howard: I have invited the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East to say in the clearest possible terms whether he is making any allegations against the statisticians in the Central Statistical Office. That is something that he has consistently refused to do.

Mr. John Smith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) suggested that I would fiddle the trade figures. In the circumstances, and if he is a man of decency, he should withdraw that wholly unjustified allegation.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We often hear the phrase "fiddling the figures" in this House in all sorts of connotations. I do not think that the hon. Member for Eastbourne was intending to impute any dishonour to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. [Interruption.] My understanding is that the hon. Gentleman did not intend that. I gave him the opportunity to clarify the matter as I was anxious to move on in a spirit of good will.

Points of Order

Mr. Speaker: I shall take first points of order arising from questions today.

Mr. Albert McQuarrie: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory reply to my question No. 6, I give notice that I intend to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. James Callaghan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. While no one would accuse any Minister on the Treasury Bench of ever fiddling any statistic, is it not a fortunate, fortuitous and happy chance that every revision of figures that is published, whether in this area or on employment, redounds to the advantage of the Government?

Mr. Robert Atkins: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Does it arise from questions today?

Mr. Atkins: Yesterday.

Mr. Speaker: It would have been more appropriate for the hon. Gentleman to have raised the matter yesterday when we had points of order. We cannot back deal.

Mr. Robert Atkins: I am not given to raising points of order ad lib, unlike some hon. Members I could mention. Conservative Members instinctively support your rulings, Mr. Speaker. It is with that consideration in mind that I ask permission to raise one or two points of order on matters that concern me.
Following consideration of what is reported in column 138 of today's Hansard—which was not available yesterday so that I could not check it—I want to ask your advice on a number of points. We are awaiting your ruling, Mr. Speaker, on the contention of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) yesterday that the so-called point of order raised by the Leader of the Opposition was not a point of order. We await your ruling on that with some interest.

Mr. Speaker: I am not prepared to take points of order today on what happened yesterday.—[Interruption.] I am not. That matter was fully dealt with yesterday in a long run of questions. It is quite out of order for the hon. Gentleman today to raise points of order that he could easily have raised on a previous day.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will take points of order only on matters that do not refer back to what happened yesterday.

Mr. Eric Forth: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are you now able to give the House guidance about the use of points of order, specifically when hon. Members use a point of order wrongly, in order to make accusations and allegations against members of the public, members of the Civil Service, or, indeed, other Members of the House? Many of us are becoming concerned at the abuse of the procedures of the House, mainly by Opposition Members, by making allegations under the guise of points of order? Will you give us guidance on that, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Let me clear up the matter once and for all. We are getting into the bad habit of raising points of

order on political issues—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Order. Such issues are nothing to do with the Chair. The House will know that I am frequently on my feet repeating the words, "This is not a matter for me". Indeed, these points of order are not matters for me, and I must say to the House that it would be in the interest of good order if we stopped it.

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that the House will agree that from the moment when, according to ancient custom, you were dragged into the Speaker's chair you have been a model in upholding the traditions of the House. Having said that, I have never raised with you a bogus point of order, but I am growing deeply concerned that many hon. Members, not just on political points, but on security points—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] When one seeks to table a question with any element of security, the Table Office rightly says that that is prevented under the Burke arrangements—[HON. MEMBERS: "Burke?"] The Birkett arrangements—not Edmund Burke. That being so, one is always willing to acquiesce with the ruling of the Table Office, which comes from you, Mr. Speaker. But I am deeply concerned—and I mean deeply concerned—that we have Members in the House who would disregard the political security of the country to make cheap political points——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is doing exactly what he was hoping nobody else would do.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am the last to add to your problems, but the House can look only to you for guidance. I say this with great and genuine sincerity. The Vote of the House, which we all have every day, is now being used almost like a mail catalogue of innuendoes and accusations about people outside the House. There was a time in the House when the Vote was used very sparingly to draw the attention of the people and of the House to various matters. Now, day after day, not one, not a dozen, but 20 people who may well be innocent, who have not had the benefit of trial and who do not have the benefit of defence, are abused and have their names dragged continually into the Vote by seekers, not after truth, but after what they think of their own careers.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) once honourably withdrew an accusation against a member of Rolls-Royce. It used to be a rare occurrence to abuse someone who was not in the House. It is now an everyday occurrence. Have you no control, Mr. Speaker, over what goes in the Vote, because if it goes on as it is we shall all be brought into disrepute?

Mr. Speaker: I have control over what goes in the Vote. The Table Office and I apply very strictly the rules regarding early-day motions. I imagine that that is what the hon. Gentleman means. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the procedure is being misused——

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Abused.

Mr. Speaker: If it were being abused, the motion would not go in. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the procedure is being misused, the proper course is to bring the matter to the attention of the Select Committee on Procedure which, I understand, is minded to examine this very matter.
Last week, I said that we were getting into the habit of naming people outside this place who had no redress and that we should watch this very carefully because, although we have an undoubted right of free speech in this place, we have an equal obligation to use it with discretion.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask for your guidance? Early-day motion 160 on today's Order Paper specifically names Lord Rothschild and accuses him in blatant and direct terms of having committed a criminal offence. That accusation has been put on the Order Paper by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). You have reminded hon. Members on many occasions that they are responsible for their statements in the House. In view of what you have just said, Mr. Speaker, may I ask for your guidance? Is there no vicious or slanderous calumny that cannot be put on the Order Paper without your having any control over it?

Mr. Speaker: Every question and every early-day motion on the Order Paper has been carefully screened by the Table Office to ensure that it meets the rules. If it did not meet the rules, it would not be on the Order Paper. I repeat, however, that if rules become misused it is right that the Procedure Committee, which is a Select Committee of this House, should look into the matter and I understand that it is seeking to do so.

Mr. Nicholls: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have dealt with the matter. The hon. Gentleman cannot ask supplementaries of me.

Mr. Nicholls: I asked for your guidance and I did not get it.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. John Townend: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not in the habit of raising points of order and I know that you regard it as very important to protect the interests of Back Benchers. I am very perturbed that every day seems to bring a long spell of bogus points of order, which inevitably takes time from Back Benchers because the Front Bench speakers always get their allocation. In future, when dealing with points of order, will you bear in mind the amount of time being taken from Back Benchers?

Mr. Speaker: That is exactly what is happening today—an Opposition day when a long list of Members wish to speak. Did I not make the same remark yesterday?

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Reference has been made to questions that I have tabled. Perhaps I could just establish——

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is exactly what I hoped that the House would stop doing. It is absolutely out of order for the hon. Gentleman to seek to raise a political point or to draw attention to his early-day motion on a point of order through me.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Sit down, please. If the point of order is a matter touching directly on my responsibility, I will take it. If not, I shall ask the hon. Gentleman to sit down at once, because this is happening too frequently.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: My point of order does not relate to early-day motions. It relates specifically to questions on the Order Paper in my name. All the individuals that I have named on the Order Paper have been the subject of a reprimand by letter from the Attorney-General and have either been referred to the Metropolitan——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am not taking that. It has nothing to do with me.

Mr. Michael Brown: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that this is the first occasion in this Parliament on which I have sought to raise a point of order in what might be described as prime time. I raise it because I, too, have decided—as is my right, provided that it is in order—to table a number of early-day motions which the Table Office has accepted and which appear on the Order Paper today.
I ask you to reconsider your remarks yesterday about the way in which the point of order raised by the Leader of the Opposition——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall not do that. I told the hon. Gentleman that we had a long run on this yesterday. I will take points of order touching on matters which have arisen today. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise a point of order about the numerous early-day motions that he has on the Order Paper today, I shall take it.

Mr. Brown: Mr. Speaker, you will see that the numerous early-day motions that I have tabled refer to the fact that some Opposition Members signed the early-day motions tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). Some of those hon. Members have Front-Bench responsibility——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Brown: I must finish this sentence.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet. The hon. Gentleman seeks to raise in the House the subject of his early-day motions. That is out of order. It is not a matter for me.

Mr. Brown: I am not seeking to do that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman seeks to do that, I shall stop him at once.

Mr. Brown: I wish to complete the sentence. The point I am making to you, Mr. Speaker, is that I invited Opposition Members to withdraw their names from an early-day motion on the assumption that they believed that they were being spoken for by——

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is precisely what the hon. Gentleman's early-day motions are about. It is not a matter for me. He has staked them out clearly in his early-day motions. That is within order and is fair enough, but it is not a matter for me.

Scotland (Education)

Mr. Dennis Canavan: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the crisis in Scottish education as a result of the Government's rejection of the Main report and the subsequent ballot of members of the Educational Institute of Scotland.
I promise to be brief. This is a genuine emergency about the gravest crisis to face Scottish education in its history. Shortly after the present Secretary of State for Scotland was appointed he agreed to set up a so-called independent inquiry into the salaries and conditions of teachers. That was a rather belated response to the longest and most bitter dispute in Scottish education. Nevertheless, there were great hopes and expectations that the setting up of the Main committee of inquiry would lead to a successful solution. When Sir Peter Main and his committee published the report a few weeks ago, there were many comments about shortcomings, misgivings and reservations. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State's response was such a disgrace that it almost finished any chance of the Main report ever being implemented and a successful solution to the dispute being found.
The Secretary of State rejected one of the principal recommendations of the Main report on the timescale of the salary proposals. If he had his way, some Scottish teachers would lose literally thousands of pounds. The largest teachers' union in Scotland, the EIS, responded by holding a special general meeting. It unanimously decided to reject what has come to be called "the Rifkind package". It decided to ballot all of its members. Just an hour ago, the result of the ballot was announced. There was an 89 per cent. return: 84 per cent., or 28,257 teachers, voted no. That represents more than half the day school

teachers in Scottish education. Whatever the other trade unions decide, the majority of Scottish day school teachers have rejected the Secretary of State's package.
Now there is a threat of further disruption in our schools. We must bear in mind the fact that some children have not experienced educational normality for two years or more. Therefore, undoubtedly the Secretary of State has plunged Scottish education into this state of deep crisis. He has ultimate responsibility for Scottish education. He is or should be accountable to Parliament. I believe that he should resign forthwith for failing to deliver and for abrogating his responsibilities to Scottish teachers, parents and schoolchildren. At the very least, the House should debate this important matter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has asked leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
the escalation of the crisis in Scottish education following the Government's rejection of the Main report and the result of the ballot of members of the Educational Institute of Scotland.
I have listened with care to what the hon. Member said and also to Scottish questions this afternoon. I regret that I do not consider the matter that he has raised as being appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20, and I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER

Members successful in the ballot were:

Mr. Rob Hayward: I beg to give notice that on Friday 12 December I shall call attention to extremism in local government.

Mr. Lewis Stevens.
Mr. Jonathan Aitken.

Opposition Day

[IST ALLOTTED DAY]

Bus Deregulation

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Front Bench spokesman, I must tell the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Robert Hughes: I beg to move,
That this House condemns the loss of essential services to the public in rural, suburban and urban areas by the failure of the 1985 Transport Act and bus de-regulation; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to repeal the 1985 Act and to replace it with legislation designed to put the social and economic needs of the community and the travelling public in the forefront of public transport policy.
I am sure that the House will join me in wishing the Secretary of State a happy birthday. I am only sorry that today's debate will disrupt and spoil his birthday celebrations. Having said that, I wish to comment on the origins of the 1985 Act.
On 12 February 1985 the then Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), in moving the Second Reading of the 1985 Transport Bill, set out the purpose of the measure. He said at column 192 of Hansard that the objective of the Bill was competition, providing an incentive for better services and providing better services and lower fares. Later, he anticipated that there would be considerable savings to ratepayers and to the public purse. The Minister of State went further in claiming major savings in Lancashire. I shall return to that in a moment.
In Committee the Minister of State said that another purpose of the Bill was to create new businesses.I do not know how far all the objectives of the Secretary of State have been met. He claimed that the Act would produce more helpful and polite drivers on the buses. I do not know whether that has been achieved, but the helpfulness has been the other way round. In Tyne and Wear, for example, it is not uncommon for passengers to guide the drivers around the routes. The passengers are being helpful to the driver, not the other way round.
As for the other criteria laid down by the Secretary of State, I can tell him that, without a shadow of doubt, the Act has been an abject failure. How could it be otherwise? Twelve months after his Second Reading speech the former Secretary of State told the annual dinner of the Bus and Coach Council:
The result of the 1985 Act was that operators were now free to conduct their businesses free from the constraints of a social conscience.
Of course, by then, the Act was safely on the statute book. We are entitled to conclude that, on that occasion, the Secretary of State was being less economical with the truth than he was on Second Reading, but we should be grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's candour. He clearly let the cat out of the bag.
The effect of the Act is simple. Those who depend upon public transport—the elderly, those with personal mobility problems, women and children on large housing estates and those who live in rural areas—are being sacrificed in the pursuit of profit. Indeed, all the evidence

shows that the position will become worse as the months go by. The Office of Fair Trading has already received 50 complaints of unfair competition, and I understand that a test case is being prepared.

Mr. Richard Alexander: The hon. Gentleman said, "as the months go by". Does he recognise that the Act has been in force only since the end of October? Is it not premature to make such comments until we have received all the evidence?

Mr. Hughes: Since the Act was put on the statute book Ministers have said, at the Dispatch Box and elsewhere, that we should wait until 26 October to see what would happen. We now know what has happened. There is no longer a need to predict. I shall deal with exactly what has been happening and allow the Secretary of State to answer the case. Unfortunately, lack of time prevents me from going through every piece of evidence which has been submitted to me. Therefore, I shall have to give a snapshot of what has been happening, but many of my hon. Friends will give more detailed analyses from their areas.
Let us first consider the level of service, about which the evidence is clear. Services in the early morning and in the evening have been drastically cut. On Saturdays and Sundays, services have almost disappeared in many areas. I am told that, in Derbyshire, the villages of Froggatt, Hassop, Pentrich, Twyford, Thulston and Coombs now have no services at all, where they previously had services. There are complaints that hospital visiting has become much more difficult and that visits must be curtailed because of cuts in services and frequency.
In Kettering, a perfectly good bus station has been closed because the county council reduced its subsidy to the National Bus Company subsidiary. The result is that passengers must queue outside in the rain—they will soon have to queue outside in the snow—while a perfectly good station remains empty. Far from being satisfied with the service, the public are dissatisfied. In Lancashire there have been 12,000 telephone calls of complaint and requests for information during the three weeks since bus deregulation day.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that precise point?

Mr. Hughes: No, I shall not give way.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member who is leading for the Opposition deliberately to mislead the House when he knows perfectly well——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must withdraw the words "deliberately to mislead".

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Accidentally to mislead, then.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members do not deliberately mislead each other.

Mr. Hughes: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. There will be ample opportunity for the hon. Lady to answer the case that I shall put and to deny the information that I have given.
Tyne and Wear has received more than 1,000 telephone calls a day—complaints and requests for information. Bus Watch, which is an independent monitoring group and which has among its members the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds and the National Federation of Women's Institutes—bodies which are not subsidiaries


of the Labour party, although the Minister might level that charge against some others—has been inundated with letters of complaint. I have some of them with me.
I expect that the Secretary of State will say, "It is all right for the Opposition to concentrate purely on the problems. Why do they not mention some of the success stories?" I have looked very hard for success stories, but I have found none. I wonder whether the Secretary of State can conjure up some success stories. Will he quote Glasgow as a success story? There are plenty of buses plying the streets of Glasgow—so many that they cannot move. The town is chock-a-block because of traffic congestion. The same is true of Newcastle, where the congestion caused by buses at some times of the day and in some parts of the city has been aggravated by a major switch back to the use of private cars.
Perhaps the Secretary of State will argue that, despite the problems, the deleterious effects of deregulation have been offset by fare reductions. Again, the facts reveal a different picture. Bus fares have increased because of direct increases and because of different travel patterns. Many people must take two or three buses to complete a journey for which they previously needed only one bus, so they have to pay twice or three times. A constituent of mine aged 63 wrote to tell me that his three-month season ticket has increased in price from £50 to £78, which is more than a 50 per cent. increase. What is worse, the new City Ride ticket does not cover the same distance as he used to travel. He has to pay again to use a different bus because another company running on that route will not accept his season ticket. When he asked what he could do about it he was told, "That is all right. You need walk only three quarters of a mile from the end of your journey to your place of work."
Many other examples could be quoted. However, perhaps the Secretary of State's last line of defence will be that the loss of services and the fare increases are offset by savings to the ratepayers. On 8 July this year the Minister of State said in press release No. 374, headed "David Mitchell welcomes bus tendering success in Lancashire":
As a direct result of the Government's new policy of competitive tendering for local bus services, Lancashire County Council has cut its planned spending from £8·3 million to £2·5 million this year—a 70 per cent. saving for broadly the same level of services.
On reading that press report one can almost feel the self-satisfaction oozing from the Minister of State. Unfortunately, he got it wrong. I received a letter from the leader of Lancashire county council, Councillor Louise Ellman——

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: A biased source.

Mr. Hughes: —in which she said:
On the financial side, Mr. Mitchell's statement about E5 million savings for Lancashire this year are clearly ridiculous. No such saving is envisaged even on the low tenders received and we will have to add to the current bill to remedy some of the problems already identified. I see that Mr. Mitchell has recently (in an interview on Radio Lancashire) re-worded his assertion to state that we will be saving £5 million next year. This projection is equally wrong.

The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): If the hon. Gentleman checked the facts, he would know that that is the annualised rate of saving that is envisaged in Lancashire. I entirely accept that

between now and the end of the financial year there will not be the full £5 million savings, but they will be of that order during a full year.

Mr. Hughes: The bullish demeanour of the Minister of State in the press release is not borne out by what he said elsewhere. At a meeting of transport professionals he said that the apparent savings this year may not be repeated next year. He must make up his mind on where he stands. He may challenge the accuracy of that statement, but I have in my pocket the Department of Transport official minute of the meeting, stating exactly what he said. Consequently, the Minister must make up his mind. Are there savings, this year, next year, or not at all? In reality, he is all at sea, and at sixes and sevens.
There is no evidence anywhere else in the country for cost savings. For example, Fife county council has increased its expenditure by £400,000 a year and has sent the bill to the Secretary of State for Scotland. I see that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is in the Chamber, and perhaps he has the cheque for the money in his pocket. Oxfordshire has increased its expenditure from £500,000 to £700,000. Derbyshire expects a 20 per cent. cost increase. Consequently, the Government cannot rebut the facts by claiming savings in other areas. I accept that some savings can be demonstrated, but they are often the result of the creative accounting that the Government allowed for in the legislation.
We know, for example, that many of the loan debts of the previous public transport undertakings were left with the local councils, and so it would appear that some of the new companies are more viable and commercially profitable than they are. Indeed, can the Secretary of State tell us how much of the debt was dealt with in that way? As I have said, the Minister of State has rebutted his own case when it comes to savings. Thus, all the agony faced by passengers, by the 9,000 who have lost their jobs with passenger transport authorities, the 9,000 who have lost their jobs in the NBC, and the agony of those still employed who have had to take wage cuts of up to £20 to £30 a week and who face much worse conditions, has had to be borne for, at best, transitory savings, and, at worst, illusory savings.
I turn briefly to another aspect of the 1985 Act—the privatisation of the NBC. In the interest of time, I shall not give all the quotations that I could give from letters or from Hansard, but I asked the Secretary of State how many of the NBC subsidiaries had been sold, the price that they were sold for, and what their assets were. He replied that he was not prepared to make that information available, and that in due course he would tell us the aggregate amount for the sales.
We exchanged correspondence on that point. The Secretary of State said that while the sales were going on it would be damaging to give the information that I sought, as it would make it more difficult to sell the other companies. That confirms that the Secretary of State has sold off, or given away, those companies just because he is obsessed with the ideology of privatising public assets. There can be no other explanation. If he had obtained a good price for them, he would have been keen to make that known, as it would have helped his negotiations. Worse, he said in his letter to me that he would never tell the


House or the public what the individual sale price of any company would be. He said that he would tell us only the aggregate amount from those sales.
If the Secretary of State was the managing director of a private company and told the annual shareholders meeting that he would not tell them what he had obtained individually for all the companies that he had sold, he would be out of his job so fast that his feet would not touch the ground. He has a duty to the House and to the public to come clean about the facts. On previous occasions we have been told to wait and see before going off at half cock about fears and worries. Well, we now know the facts. The Secretary of State also knows them. His reaction to the facts was shown in a speech that he made to the Institution of Civil Engineers on 20 November. That speech was breathtaking in its complacency. The only part of it that I could agree with was when he complimented those who had to do the work of preparing for deregulation. I accept that they have done a tremendous amount of work, in very difficult circumstances.
In his speech the Secretary of State said:
the legislation that we have put in place for the change is clearly generally working well.
The right hon. Gentleman concluded by telling the people involved that he hoped
you will look back on these times with some pleasure and some sense of achievement".
I was too kind when I said that the right hon. Gentleman's speech was breathtaking in its complacency. It showed that his spell in the Treasury did him a lot of harm. There he learnt that two half truths make a whole truth, and that is the basis of his policy.
The evidence shows that the 1985 Act has failed, and that is why our motion calls on the Government to repeal it. There are no practical obstacles to doing so. The Secretary of State has plenty of time, as the Department of Transport's legislative programme is the lightest that I have ever known. The Department's only Bill, the Pilotage Bill, is starting life in the other place. If the Secretary of State will accept the repeal of the 1985 Act, I can promise him the Opposition's co-operation in speeding that repeal through. Furthermore, we offer to draft the Bill for him. We cannot be fairer than that.
The principles of that legislation will be based on service to the customer, provided by directly elected local transport authorities. The local transport authorities will be charged with the responsibility of producing and executing plans for the integration of bus and rail transport. The plans will be concerned with the needs of the customer and will cater for those in society who have special needs. The plans will ensure that the services are provided at reasonable fares that people can afford.
The legislation will ensure the widest possible local consultation on the needs of the locality, and will take account of the social fabric of the society in which we live. The legislation will restore local decision making and local democracy when it comes to transport needs and to determining the socially necessary financial support for maintaining those services.
From my travels up and down the country it is clear that a great deal of local initiative and innovation have been stifled by the 1985 Act. Those concerned desperately wish to be free of the constraints with which they are now saddled. I do not expect that the Government will take up our very generous offer to assist in the repeal of the 1985 Act, but we will repeal it, and we shall restore the concept

of public service to our transport undertakings. For the Labour party, a social conscience is not a constraint: it is a stimulus to action. That will be the hallmark of our transport policy in government.

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. John Moore): I beg to move, to leave out from 'House' to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
'congratulates the Government on its radical measures to arrest the long running decline of the bus industry by abolishing outdated controls and creating the conditions in which competition, innovation and enterprise can flourish and provide better bus services, whilst at the same time enabling local authorities to obtain value for money in subsidising socially necessary services, thereby putting the social and economic needs of the community and of the travelling public in the forefront of public transport policy.'.
Before beginning the main thrust of my speech, I should like to respond to one or two of the points made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes). My hon. Friend the Minister of State will respond to sonic of the other points at the end of the debate. However, I must say that many of the points made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North were made in his normal measured style.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the National Bus Corporation, and the House has a legitimate interest in accountability for public money. He was right, in that the letter that I sent to him on 31 October says:
because it involves the sale of a large number of similar bodies over an extended period.
But it might have helped if the hon. Gentleman had continued the quotation. The letter continues:
The price of any individual sale, if published now, could in my view, and in the view of the Chairman of the NBC, prejudice negotiations with those who are interested in future purchases.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North may not be aware that I once had the privilege of serving on the Public Accounts Committee. Although we need to protect confidentiality to ensure that the proper benefits go to the taxpayer, the information must be regularly made available to the National Audit Office, and so to the PAC, which has arrangements for conserving commercial confidentiality. The hon. Gentleman is a fair man, and I know that he would want me to make the House aware of that.
Again, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North was very fair in drawing my attention to remarks made by my predecessor. I thank him for his courtesy and for his reference to my birthday, although perhaps one does not really want to spend one's birthday standing at the Dispatch Box. However, he drew my attention to two of my predecessor's speeches, and said that he would mention them. On 11 February 1986, my predecessor spoke to the Bus and Coach Council. He referred to operators having the freedom to manage their businesses without the constraints of a social conscience. That was fairly quoted by the hon. Gentleman, but he neglected to turn over the page. My predecessor referred not simply to the role of management, but to decisions about social needs by local authorities. That was the other side—the legitimate side—of the problem.
The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the Second Reading of the Transport Bill when my predecessor mentioned the things that he thought competition would provide—an incentive to be efficient and offering


passengers a better quality of service. The hon. Gentleman neglected to quote my predecessor fully. The precise phrase used by my predecessor was:
The customers may want greater efficiency, lower fares, smaller buses going into residential estates, greater comfort or a more polite and helpful driver."—[Official Report, 12 February 1985; Vol. 73, c. 192.]
I am simply making it clear that that reference was made in relation to the legitimate desire of the customers. I wished to put the whole quotation on the record.
I shall try not be be extensive in my remarks because this will obviously be an interesting debate, because clearly it will illuminate the fundamental differences between the parties. I fully accept that fact. I will not accept the offer made on behalf of the Opposition by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North to assist in the repeal of the legislation. The debate will show again that Labour is trapped in its past. Labour Members are incapable of meeting modern problems. They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Under Labour—should the party obtain office—bus users, like everyone else, will not be allowed to decide what they need and want. The planners and bureaucrats will decide for them.
The Labour party sees no future for the bus industry other than ever-increasing subsidies and ever-declining services. We must contrast that Labour defeatism with the bold measures that we have taken. We have made the most radical changes in the bus industry for 50 years. We have removed the out-dated controls that were crippling the industry, and instead we have sought to create the maximum possible potential for innovation and efficiency. At the same time, we have sought to safeguard the provision of socially worthwhile, but commercially unprofitable, routes.
After hearing the hon. Gentleman's speech, we must ask why it was necessary to be so radical. First, the bus industry has been in decline for 30 years whichever party was in office. Secondly, bus usage has halved since 1955—that is a fact. Thirdly, the bus share of the travel market has also dropped from 38 per cent. to a mere 8 per cent. in the same period. Fourthly, in the past 10 years, bus fares have risen 24 per cent. in real terms, and risen 19 per cent. more than motoring costs. Fifthly, within the same 10 years, local services declined by 15 per cent. and employment dropped by 22 per cent.
Those are the facts of an industry trapped in a spiral of decline. I recognise that that decline was not due to a lack of support from taxpayers and ratepayers. Quite the contrary. Subsidies to support the industry's losses grew in real terms from £20 million in 1970 to over £½ billion in 1985. There were increasing subsidies, decreasing services, a declining industry. Clearly, we had to act. We attacked the root cause of the problem. Bus services did not ebb away through lack of demand for them. The market was still there.
Thirty-nine per cent. of the nation do not have access to a car. Many people who do would much rather use a bus if there were a service that met their needs. We recognise that thousands of people want good bus services—the commuters, the elderly, young people, and the less well off. Under the old system, these people's pleas mostly went unanswered, except in areas where larger and larger amounts of public money were spent to lesser and lesser effect. Under the old system, the market mechanism to

meet their needs did not exist. It is on behalf of these people that we have been trying to restore to the bus industry the ability to respond to its customers' demands. We have deregulated the industry—despite what some hon. Gentlemen have said—not because of the ideological dogma that is so familiar on the Labour Benches, but because we wanted to give the industry back to its consumers. The existence of a large group of consumers who wanted better bus services gave us the confidence to think that it was possible to check the industry's decline. It was obvious that here was the market by which the industry could, and ultimately must, live.

Mr. Eddie Loyden: How has the Minister passed the bus service back to the consumer? On Merseyside, on days one and two, cleaners, who start their work at 5.30 in the morning, waited three-quarters of an hour for a bus for the first time in their lives. To my personal knowledge, that week, the first system changed on at least three occasions. Unlike the Secretary of State, I am a public transport user; I do not own a car. Therefore, I travel by public transport. All that the Government have done, as far as Merseyside is concerned, is to create absolute chaos and impose avoidable hardships on people on the outskirts of Liverpool. In many cases, fares increased four times.

Mr. Moore: Before deregulation day, 26 October 1986, I said, as did my hon. Friend the Minister of State, that the changes would create initial difficulties and disruption. Anybody who seeks to make changes of the radical kind that we are talking about, after 50 years of long-term decline, must expect initial difficulties.

Mr. Robert Adley: Will the Secretary of State quickly refute the allegation that the Government are motivated purely by dogma by quite properly claiming that the Government nationalised London Transport, took it out of the hands of the GLC politicians and put it back into the hands of professional transport operators? Since then, there has been a marked increase in the number of passengers, a tremendous improvement in the service and a reduction in the necessary subsidy.

Mr. Moore: My hon. Friend is a little ahead of Monday's Question Time when, obviously, the great success of London Regional Transport are to be discussed.
The fainthearted—obviously there are some in the House—could have been forgiven for thinking that the bus industry's future was bleak. But the Government were not fainthearted. We realised that buses could have a future. We tested that belief. It is interesting to hear some remarks one month after deregulation day. We tested that belief in 1980 when we deregulated long distance coaches. Do hon. Members remember what Labour said then? Mr. Albert Booth said that that Act
would pose a serious threat of damage, possibly irreparable, to bus services in many parts of the country.
He added that he believed
that an expansion of bus services based on competition between private operators exists only in a Tory dream world.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), whom I believe is still with us, said that that Bill was
an ideological concept, which will reduce the mobility of those who are most needy and disadvantaged in our society."—[Official Report, 27 November 1979; Vol 974, c. 1133 and 1235.]
What have we heard since? We have heard nothing. Opposition Members were wrong. The 1980 Transport


Act led to the starting up of 700 new services and a sharp fall in coach fares. That was the reality of the "Tory dream world"—better services at lower prices. The Opposition might be disappointed by the success of the 1980 Act, but the travelling public are not. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North is not disappointed in it. He was not trapped in some of the remarks that I can quote. The travelling public is receiving good, fast, efficient coach services at the right price.
Understandably, with the success of long distance coach deregulation behind us, the Government turned to local services. The system that we replaced was embodied in the Road Traffic Act 1930. It may have been the right one for the 1930s, but by the 1980s it had, for many years, restricted the bus industry's ability to compete with the private car. The industry was unable to compete with the car because the Act limited the number of bus operators. Operators needed a licence for each route they ran, but once they had the licence their lives were comfortable. If another operator applied for a licence to run on the same route, they were allowed to object, and their objections were often upheld. Once the operator had his licence, there was little chance that he would have a competitor to keep him on his toes, to keep him alert to his customers' needs, to keep his fares down or to encourage him to run on time. This lack of competition accelerated the painful decline of the bus industry. No competition meant that the consumer had no effective way of telling the bus industry what he wanted. All that was said in 1980. How wrong the Opposition were. When the bus industry did not supply what the consumer wanted, he went away.

Mr. Tony Baldry: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, just as the Opposition were wrong about long distance buses, they have also been wrong about local buses? I am not sure what sort of world they live in. If Opposition Members come to Banbury, they will discover that where previously there was only one bus every half hour to a council estate there is now a bus every 15 minutes. There used to be only four buses an hour to the most populous housing estate, but now there are at least 10 buses an hour and on some parts of the route 16 an hour. Opposition Members are welcome to come to Banbury as my guests to see exactly what is happening there.

Mr. Moore: I thank my hon. Friend for that. Many of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Minister of State, will make similar detailed points and illustrate the success stories that abound throughout the country. I am trying to deal with the main frame of the policy, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North suggested I should do.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) read out some figures for Lancashire. There were 11,000 queries, but few of them were complaints. The cameras went round the first day when the buses were deregulated and there was, indeed, something of a problem. [Laughter.] A photograph was taken of a gentleman who was dissatisfied on that first day. The next day I bumped into him when I was shopping and asked him how the service was now. He said, "Perfectly all right. The only thing was that on the first day we couldn't get used to the new numbers. Now everbody has got used to them." That is extremely interesting. Another elderly chap said, "Although I'd been using the old service for years, I soon got used to the new one."

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order. Interventions must be brief.

Mr. Moore: My hon. Friend with her knowledge has made her point. I shall proceed because this is a short debate.
Protecting existing operators from competition was justified, and is about to be justified again by Opposition Front Bench spokesmen, on the ground of cross-subsidy. Operators who ran loss-making routes were allowed to make up for them by charging unnecessarily high fares on their profitable routes, so the one type of route subsidised the other. That might appear reasonable, but it was not—not at all—because charging high fares on profitable routes drove custom away to such an extent that some of those routes became unprofitable and needed the support of the remaining profitable routes to be maintained. So the downward spiral continued. Cross-subsidy by its very nature made services worse, not better.
Protection from competition to shield cross-subsidy is both unjust and ineffective. I should have thought Opposition Members understood that. It is unjust because cross-subsidy for unprofitable routes comes not from the general public purse, but from other bus users. Bus users have a generally lower income than average, so cross-subsidy means that the less well off are made to subsidise themselves. To make the poor subsidise the poor as not part of Conservative philosophy. The changes that we have made to the bus industry rest on the principle that the consumer comes first because we know that putting consumers first is not only good for them, but vital to the well-being of the bus industry and its employees. It is only by serving customers well that an industry grows and prospers.
A clear-sighted look at the bus industry immediately identifies two kinds of bus service: that which is commercially viable on its own and that which is socially necessary but cannot be operated without a subsidy. Who identifies which is which? We say that the free market must do this. Only the free market can determine which routes are profitable, and only the free market can properly match buses and bus routes to the needs of the passenger.
Under the new Act any licensed operator can run a bus route so long as it meets safety standards, so there is now no cosy protection for those who run routes. Competition is ever present and it is having a remarkable effect on the efficiency of bus operators. It is encouraging them to think——

Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Moore: No. I must continue.

Mr. Wareing: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Moore: I will not give way. It is encouraging them to think of new ideas to develop their markets——

Mr. Wareing: Will the Minister give way on the point of safety?

Mr. Moore: It is inspiring them to take the new opportunities that deregulation offers.

Mr. Wareing: Will the Minister give way on that point?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that the Minister is not giving way.

Mr. Moore: Overall, the free market found that about 75 per cent. of bus services were profitable—that was


the amount registered. But—I stress this—we recognise that there are socially worthwhile services which cannot run without subsidy.
I know that our desire to maintain subsidised services was a great disappointment to the Opposition parties. On many occasions they made up for that disappointment by giving the impression to people that we were going to do away with subsidised services. I hope people now realise with what cynical contempt they were being treated by the Opposition. Local authorities have stepped in with subsidy as they were always intended to and the free market has played its part in providing better services at a better price. Local authorities have not been able to throw public money about with the gay abandon some did before. Local authorities do not decide how much subsidy a route needs; the market decides. Local authorities now put the route out to open tender and, thus, discover who can run it most efficiently and give the best value for money.
We have removed the restrictions on the quantity of bus services under the 1930 Act, but not the parts of it which related to safety. There is no compromise on safety under deregulation.

Mr. Wareing: Will the Minister give way on that point?

Mr. Moore: Safety remains the priority it always has been and the traffic commissioners and my Department will be enforcing it every bit as strictly as before.

Mr. Wareing: rose——

Mr. Moore: Indeed, we have increased the number of staff engaged on safety checks by 24 per cent.
The broad maintenance of service levels does not mean that every bus which was previously running still is. For local authorities one of the great benefits of the Transport Act 1985 is the financial transparency in the organisation of bus services. Under the old system many councils simply did not know where their money was going. Now they have the information to judge expenditure properly. Some services have been revealed as bad value for money while others have turned out to be less expensive than was thought. This means that local authorities can focus their limited funds on services that really benefit the people of their area.
The greatest achievement of the Transport Act is not that service levels have been maintained or even that enormous savings have been made, but that the bus industry now has a structure which will allow it to serve its customers better for years to come. It now is, and will remain, open to new ideas and innovation so that it can meet the real needs of its consumers. Before, buses were unable to adapt to a changing market, but now all that is changing.
The results of the new freedom are visible already.

Mr. Derek Fatchett: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Moore: New services are being introduced and neglected corners of the market are being developed.

Mr. Wareing: The Minister is frightened.

Mr. Moore: I have already given way many times because I am endeavouring to allow hon. Members who wish to speak to intervene. Normally I give way to every intervention. I am endeavouring politely to respond to the

usual pattern of sedentary interruptions, but they will only prevent Back Bench Members from speaking in the debate.
Bus operators started operating mini-bus services even before official deregulation. Now there are many more. By the end of the year the old NBC companies plan to have 3,000 mini-buses. In Lincoln the presence of a fleet of NBC mini-buses has encouraged the formerly municipal-owned transport company to run taxis as a bus service in competition. That is a good demonstration of how competition spurs innovation and benefits the passenger.
The Transport Act ensures that the bus industry will continue to be invigorated by competition and guided by the needs of its customers. It is an excellent example of Conservative philosophy in action—it is practical, rational and gives people what they want. The contrast with Socialism could not be more stark. The motion shows with frightening clarity how the Opposition are locked in the straitjacket of outdated, ineffective, autocratic ideas—the kind of ideas that sent the bus industry into a nearly terminal decline. I urge the House to reject it and to endorse instead the measures that will put the industry back on its feet and ensure its robust health for years to come.

Mr. George Howarth: I shall first say a word about my predecessor, Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk, who, during his time in the House, represented the problems of many constituents, on occasions very successfully. He also served with some distinction on the important issue of penal reform. That is still an important issue.
In recent weeks Knowsley, North has received the full thrust and glare of national publicity. Unfortunately, much of that publicity did not really focus on the devastating problems that confront many of my constituents. This issue is one of them. It is a matter of grave concern that unemployment in Knowsley, North is officially 23 per cent. and unofficially, as we know, probably much higher. That is nothing short of a scandal. Many skilled and enthusiastic people in the constituency have little or no prospect of a job. Especially heartbreaking is the plight of young people, many of whom do not believe that they will ever have the opportunity of employment or the dignity of being able to support themselves and any family they may have. Unfortunately, their cynicism and scepticism are borne out by the fact that in 1984 only 6 per cent. of school leavers in the borough of Knowsley ended up in employment.
The consequences of excluding so many people from economic life are invariably depressing and debilitating. Two examples sum that up very well. In 1978, 30 per cent. of schoolchildren were receiving free school meals in the borough of Knowsley. That is bad enough, but the current figure is about 45 per cent. A poem was written by one of my constituents during the election campaign. She asked me to draw it to the attention of Conservative Members. The poem says:
To you we're known as them up there.
Mum, why do I get free dinners when a few kids have to pay?
That's the question asked by my young son the other day.
That is a real comment from a real person suffering from those problems.
Of particular relevance in this debate is the fact that in my constituency 67 per cent. of households do not have


access to a motor car. Perhaps it is interesting to note that in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), who introduced the measures, only 23 per cent. do not have access to a motor car. That sharpens the divide between north and south yet again. It is clear that, as most of my constituents do not have access to a car, many of them depend exclusively on public transport for their means of travel.
Deregulation has had many effects, all of them for the worse, on those who live in my constituency. My constituents were not given any clear information about route changes or timetables, and that resulted in absolute and utter chaos on the day that the measures were introduced. There are examples of fares doubling and, in some cases, trebling, which, in a poor area—it is a poor area—is devastating. It prevents people from being able to make necessary journeys, and that means that people cannot visit families and cannot go shopping comfortably. In some cases, it makes it difficult to seek employment. Moreover, the lack of buses is beginning to have a deleterious effect on the local economy.
A good example of that is a local employer, Mysons, a manufacturing company on the Knowsley, North industrial estate. I should say a word of thanks to the former Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). During his time as the Minister responsible for Merseyside, in addition to his other responsibilities, he and the local authority identified that industrial estate for special attention and additional resources. We applaud the local authority and Conservative Members for co-operating in that. The sad fact is that the management of Mysons has said that, in spite of that and the fact that £5 million has been poured into the industrial estate in the past few years, the company is now suffering from lost production, which will lead to lost orders, because there is no reliable public transport system for the workers to travel to work on. A total of 35 per cent. of the work force depend on public transport. What the Government and the local authority are doing to build up the local economy is being undone by the lack of public transport.
Earlier, I referred to a poem by one of my constituents. A few lines of that poem sum up how I and many of my constituents feel. I hope that right hon. and hon. Gentleman will listen to and take heed of what is being said. The poem says:
Somebody's got to help us, it really isn't fair,
Because we're penalised for looking,
For jobs that just aren't there.
I want to shout and make a fuss,
It's our kids suffering more than us.
I pledge on behalf of the woman who wrote that poem, and other constituents, that I shall shout and make a fuss. I hope that Conservative Members will listen, because we need their support.

Mr. John Mark Taylor: It is a pleasure for me to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth). It was thoughtful, forceful and lucid. He told us about his constituency and the anxieties of the people whom he represents. I thought that in all the circumstances he mentioned his predecessor very gracefully. Many of us thought that his seat was well represented before, but it is certainly well represented now. It was an excellent maiden speech and we shall listen most carefully to his future contributions.
My remarks must be set in the context of my experience in the midlands with the West Midlands passenger transport operation, and, in particular, the experience of the borough of Solihull, part of which I represent: and where I live. As in so many things in human affairs, while our best hopes may not yet have been realised, it is true that the worst fears have not come to pass. That is in sharp contrast to the cynical and unscrupulous way in which some of the Government's opponents sought, in the period leading up to reorganisation and deregulation, to arouse the anxieties of our constituents who are dependent on public transport, especially the old-age pensioners. The worst deed of those opponents was the propaganda that old-age pensioners would lose their concessionary bus passes. That was never true, and they must have known that it was not true. I regret having to say that the Local Labour party in my constituency in particular must stand condemned for worrying old people in that way quite unnecessarily.
It would be a bold man who would predict the final outcome of the changes until some time after 27 January 1987. There has been a great deal of change, and many of the changes have had to bed down and settle and people have to become accustomed to them. Certainly in Solihull every route in the borough has changed to some extent. A total of 115 bus routes have been registered, 63 as commercial routes and 52 as routes subsidised by the West Midlands passenger transport executive. It has to be said as a word of caution that in the west midlands there is not as much competition as might have been hoped for. There are historic reasons for that.
Of the 115 bus routes in Solihull, 75 are run by West Midlands Travel, which is the commercial entity spawned by the former public monopolist. West Midlands Travel is in a dominant position, but, despite that, changes of attitudes are to be noticed. Competition has motivated people, and that is welcome and worth while. However, we do not have buses going down the same street fighting for passengers. That was a phantom paraded before our eyes, but it has not been observed in practice.

Mr. David Clelland: rose——

Mr. Taylor: I shall give way only once, as this is a short debate. I hope that the hon. Gentleman's colleagues will bear that in mind.

Mr. Clelland: In reply to a question that I asked the Secretary of State for the Environment only the other day, he told me that, instead of people queuing for buses, buses were queuing for people. Surely the hon. Gentleman has it wrong.

Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to develop his points in his own speech.
We do not have the phenomenon of buses racing down streets in masses. The development has been much more ordered. The overall level of services, certainly in my part of the midlands, is almost exactly the same as previously. With keen tendering, of which there is evidence, we have every reason to hope for savings in public expenditure.
Although the overall volume of provision is the same, the service is different. West Midlands Travel has purchased a substantial fleet of "mini-buzzes"—they are spelt like that. To start with, they were mechanically rather unreliable, but those problems seem to have been overcome. The only criticisms about these small "buzzes"


relate to lack of individual passenger space and the occasional incidents when school "buzzes", and certainly those for Solihull school, have found more passengers at the bus stop than can get on. The first of these problems is a design challenge, which can probably be met. The second is a good problem for the operator. He should, and will, respond by putting on more buses.
It is important that the operator should buy a British vehicle whenever possible. Even if it is not a Land Rover, it can be a Sherpa, made by Freight Rover. It remains as true in this as in volume car making that if the British people want a home-based vehicle industry they must be prepared to support it as purchasers and buy the product. The political shouting in my part of the world has died out and other forms of competition are asserting themselves, although there is a high level of administrative wait and see. One thing is clear: there is a bus stop outside my house, and there was not one there before.

Mr. Stephen Ross: It so happens that I shall be quoting from a letter from a constituent of the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor). I hope that he will wait to hear what his constituent says.
I add my praise to the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) who made a confident maiden speech. I wish that I could make such competent speeches after 12 years in the House. He spoke from the heart, and knows his constituency and its transport problems. I know that from the short visit that I made to Knowsley.
I do not propose to rehearse the arguments that were made about bus deregulation when the Bill was debated in the House. My concern is to review what has happened since then, acknowledge the benefits, such as they are, that have been secured, and draw the Minister's attention to the mistakes and weaknesses that he should try to remove. I shall deal first with the improvements.
There is no doubt that, in anticipation of competition, many bus companies, and particularly the National Bus Company, sharpened their operations considerably. Management had grown complacent and become used to a cycle of declining services and higher fares. We have heard the frightening statistics about subsidies growing over the years 1970 to 1982. The unions had become more concerned to protect the outdated working practices of the existing, and shrinking, work force than to look for an expansion of jobs.
In the best cases, such as the Exeter city services, operated by Devon General, there has been an explosion of new, innovative minibus services, with frequencies in many places of five minutes and the operating day extending to midnight. Ridership on some routes has tripled and employment opportunities have increased. Up to 300 more people are now working for Devon General. As the Secretary of State said, all this was accomplished before privatisation, in anticipation of the market becoming contestable.
That success is a tribute to the managerial team which, I am pleased to say, was successful in buying the company. It is also a tribute to a city council and a county council, neither of which is under Conservative control, which have tried to make the new arrangements work. The situation in the neighbouring county of Somerset is also encouraging, with an increase in the work force and a

positive response by the county's transportation committee to the views of the users, who were fully consulted on routes required before tenders were invited.
I am glad that other companies have been bought out by management, and particularly pleased where these buyouts are to be extended to cover all grades of staff, as in the case of Badgerline. In particular, I mention Southern Vectis—no doubt, Ministers were expecting that. I was privileged to break a bottle of champagne over the wheel of a double decker bus in celebration of the fact that it had been bought out by its management. I am grateful to the Minister of State for his help in pulling off that transaction. As he knows, there was opposition and people were frightened that an operator from Yorkshire, using German buses, would get the company. However this is one concern that the island has bought for itself, and we mean to hang on to it. All the vehicles operated by Southern Vectis are British built. Regrettably, that is not so elsewhere. It is not so in London Transport, and those of us in Norman Shaw, North look out on Mercedes minibuses operating to Kensington.
I urge the Minister to reach speedy decisions on the disposal of the remainder of the former NBC companies. I hope that he will continue to look with favour on management and management-staff buy-outs. I am sure that these professional busmen, who have spent a lifetime in the industry and are strongly imbued with the tradition of public service, will rise to the challenge that has been set. Many are risking their homes and life savings in taking over their businesses, which have few tangible assets. I, for one, wish them success, and hope that the Minister will quickly end their uncertainty about the future.
It is interesting to contrast the reaction of alliance-led councils in the west of England, which are trying to make deregulation and privatisation work, with the attitude of some bus undertakings in the former metropolitan areas. I understand that in Manchester the bus company has cut back services, declined to innovate, and apparently hopes, in vain, that a Labour Government will be returned to save it from competition and from the effort needed to revitalise services along the lines successfully developed in Exeter. In contrast, we believe in innovation, which brings better services and more jobs.
Having said that, I must acknowledge that there are undoubtedly many problems and a great deal of dissatisfaction in various parts of the country, much of which was confidently predicted in Committee. It would have been avoided if the Government had not been so hell-bent on total deregulation of the industry, leaving it to market forces and a free-for-all. Here I quote Mr. C. J. Noble of Solihull, from 16 Willow Drive, Cheswick Green, Solihull.

Mr. John Mark Taylor: That is not in my constituency.

Mr. Iain Mills: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that is in my constituency?

Mr. Ross: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon and accept the correction.
Mr. Noble said:
Until the 26th October 1986, the West Midlands had an integrated travel network similar to that of London Transport but without the underground. Now, as a result of deregulation of local public transport, West Midland commuters are at the mercy of a financial lottery which determines their daily journey. Rival operators will not co-operate in providing common travel cards, timetables, or tickets—even when they share the same route.


The annual cost of my daily journey, twelve miles across Birmingham via three different operators, has risen from £200 to £460. This increase is largely due to the non co-operation between different operators, the number of which has increased significantly—a direct consequence of deregulation. The equivalent journey in London using a London Transport two zone travel card would cost only £224 per year. Unless a reasonably priced common travel card is introduced in the near future I intend to travel to work by car.
What incentive is there for the unemployed to obtain work or for people in low paid jobs to continue working if a large percentage of their income is spent in reaching work. A person earning £6,000 per year would need a 6·2 per cent pay rise to finance a fare increase of £260.
The transport act of 1985 has removed the power of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive to compel all operators in the area to accept a common travel card. The act must be amended to restore this power. The arguments that exempted London from the act apply equally to the West Midlands and other metropolitan areas. A journey from home to work in a large urban conurbation is likely to involve more than one connection; co-operation not competition is required to provide an efficient, cost-effective transport system. Public transport is a service not a commodity.
That story can be repeated in many large conurbations in the country, and certainly in Knowsley, North, as I discovered.

Mr. Iain Mills: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that flatter, because I have been outside in the Lobby and unable to raise it myself. I assure the hon. Gentleman that his correspondent has been to see me and that he has had my full attention. Some weeks ago I referred the matter to the Minister for his consideration, with the strong recommendation that we find some way to make common travel cards acceptable throughout the country.

Mr. Ross: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has responded to his constituent's complaint. He was right to do so, and I hope that he has some effect. I now have to buy two tickets to come to London every day because Sealink will not accept through booking from certain stations on British Rail. In that respect, we have gone back 50 years.
Last week the Pre-school Playgroups Association held its birthday celebration in this House, and many hon. Members attended. One of the ladies present told me about a young mother in south Herefordshire who attempted suicide because she could no longer get her three children to their playgroup. In that part of the world there is now only one bus per week, in contrast to the former daily service. I was almost attacked by pensioners when I was in Newbury recently, as they have been similarly affected. There is now only one bus on two days, Thursday and Friday, whereas there used to be a regular daily service. The bus now only goes into town for two hours. I am also told that there is no longer a direct bus service from Newbury to Oxford, and one has to go via Reading.
Services in north Northumberland have disappeared altogether, which has cut off Newcastle from many villages in that part of the world. Drivers employed by the Provincial Bus Company covering Gosport and Fareham recently staged a three-day strike—probably their first in living memory. They are faced with losing £25 per week, or more, from their weekly pay packets following the introduction of a fleet of new minibuses, whose schedules they claim were far too tight and left many customers standing at the bus stops. I believe that there have also been stoppages in nearby Portsmouth.

Mr. Michael Hancock: Is it not strange that in Portsmouth the bus operators have had to be subjected to strikes by the work force to try to bring to the attention of the public and their employers the problems that they had in trying to provide a bus service which they felt was wholly inadequate and also unsafe because of the very tight schedules?
Will the hon. Gentleman congratulate the "4 What It's Worth" programme, which has been virtually the only television programme to have taken up the issue? It has received objections to what has happened from over 200 different constituencies. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows only too well that an area of old Portsmouth has been completely isolated. Nobody has come forward to replace the bus service which was previously provided as a social service by the local authority.

Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman has made his point, and I understand it. The whole exercise has been a failure because only about 200 new operators have entered the field—an average of four per county. Only about. 50 taxi operators have registered. I believe that to be the correct figure, but no doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. The Minister must take some important steps if he wishes to encourage the development of better bus services. I say that in all honesty, because it is our country and it affects the people whom we represent.
First, insufficient money is available to maintain even a basic level of service in some areas, mainly in those of a rural and semi-rural nature. Competitive tendering will reduce costs, but local authorities need to have enough money to maintain essential services to more remote places. In too many cases bus services have been reduced to a level where people no longer find it possible to work a normal day. I have cited such examples. There is a need to review funding. Vast sums are not involved, but something more is needed.
Secondly, it is the Government's duty to secure fair competition. The regulations relating to the roadworthiness of vehicles and drivers' rest must be applied equally and forcefully. In the past, vehicle examiners have set higher standards for companies in the public sector than for the smaller private operator. We know that the facilities of the public companies are generally very good. Many of the smaller operators do not have such facilities, and I can cite an example of that in my area. In a competitive market that sort of subjective discrimination must stop and all operators must meet the same high standards.
Many smaller operators, some undertaking school contract work, have used drivers who have worked a full week driving lorries or performing other activities. I have drawn the attention of the traffic commissioner at Eastbourne to a particular service in my area which worried me. We discovered just in time that an operator who was to take school children on double-decker buses was going to use off-duty Southern Vectis men. That was stopped, but such matters must be investigated. Some drivers are working far too many hours. Operating buses is not an occupation for cowboys. The possession of an operator's licence or a public service vehicle licence should be restricted to those willing to observe professional standards, and those who flout the rules should be cleared out of the industry.
If competition is to be fair, there must be one set of rules for all, and they must be firmly enforced. For that to


happen there must be an adequate force of inspectors, and I look for a Government assurance that, in the freer market that has been created, the Minister is planning to provide an adequate inspectorate. I know that he announced that there would be an extra 24 inspectors, but that is not enough to meet present demand.

Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as this is a short debate. Does he agree that the situation that he has described is not new? It was technically possible even before the Transport Act.

Mr. Ross: It is far more prevalent now. We shall in any case get our answer at the end of the debate.
Thirdly, in a competitive market, it is essential that a publicly owned operator—for example, a local authority bus company—does not force a privately owned operator off the road by predatory action, that is, using ratepayers' money to subsidise the fares or service frequency of the local authority service to win a larger share of the market. That happened in Cardiff a few years ago, when a private operator tried to enter the market.
Fourthly, we are concerned about the future of railway services in the conurbations in which the amount of money available for supporting public transport has been reduced. What is to happen to the railway services or the Metro services in Tyne and Wear—this issue was raised continually in the debates on the Bill—if the local authorities decide to concentrate their remaining financial resources on the bus services? Those local authorities employ the bus staff, but, except in Tyneside, they do not employ the railwaymen. They may decide that, from an industrial relations viewpoint, it is easier to reduce train services than bus services.
Has the Minister any plans to protect the level of rail services and to protect the bus/rail interchanges which have been so painstakingly built up over the past decade? The most appalling thing about the Act is that it puts at risk the integrated transport system—such as it is—in this country. The Minister should not tell us that the market will resolve those problems.
The method by which railway services are funded—section 20 payments through the passenger transport authorities—might well encourage the reduction of rail services because the extra congestion that would be caused in city centres if passengers were transferred from trains to buses does not appear in anyone's balance sheet. It just causes misery for all. In the absence of any credible system of road pricing, and bearing in mind that the buses pay next to nothing for the use of road space, there is a real danger of many more buses and fewer trains, which will lead to much more congestion, pollution and delay for everybody.
That has already happened in London, where there are vast numbers of coaches and double-decker sightseeing buses. Often, when I am waiting for a bus, about 16 sightseeing buses pass before a No. 159 appears. Those sightseeing buses come in many hues and can be seen parked all over town in places such as Oxford street and the Haymarket, causing terrible congestion.
Bus deregulation has only just begun and it is too early to draw firm conclusions. At this stage, my hon. Friends and I believe that some good may come of it, and I stated that at the beginning of my speech. That is more likely to

happen if the Minister will take account of the constructive points that I have tried to make. The Exeter experience suggests that services improve when the operators realise that in future the market will be contestable. That seems to be far more important than to have open unregulated competition on the streets. The final madness was clearly demonstrated in Glasgow, where a national bus subsidiary is chasing the municipal buses, costing the country God knows how much and blocking the streets.

Mr. Roger Gale: The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) has just said, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) said at the start of the debate, that the debate is being held far too soon. It is indicative of the Opposition's general Luddite attitude towards any form of innovation that they are prepared to cry "stinking fish" before the new services are up and running. It is a pity that the Opposition were not prepared to look closely at some of the areas where experiments were carried out and where deregulation has been in force for a long time.
It is also a pity that my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd) is not present this afternoon. He is in his constituency promoting yet more new industry. He has won wide acclaim on the Conservative Benches for the manner in which he has presented the facts of the Hereford success instead of the fiction perpetrated by the opportunists of the Hereford Liberal party. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight was candid about some of the successes and it is a great shame that some of his colleagues have not been as generous in their comments on the Hereford experiment. There and elsewhere where experiments have been carried out, and where a system has been in play for a reasonable time, the travelling public are receiving better value for money, better services at lower cost to the ratepayer.

Mr. Stephen Ross: As a member of the Select Committee on Transport, I visited Hereford, and the experiment there cannot be described as a success. If only the Government had taken rather more notice of what the Hereford and Worcester council wanted in the way of regulation, there might have been a better outturn.

Mr. Gale: My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford anticipated some such comment and provided me with a copy of the Wye Valley Review, which is not known for its specific support of my hon. Friend. It says:
The new Transport Act should make little difference to local bus travellers as many companies have anticipated it and introduced revised services, says the Gloucestershire County Council. The Council has let 56 contracts for otherwise uprofitable routes.
That gainsays what the hon. Gentleman has just said.
It is inevitable that the gloom-mongers should seize on every defect in the new timetables and present them as a complete failure of what will prove nationally, as has been the case in trial areas, to be an excellent system.
I want to refer briefly to one difficulty that we face locally. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight referred to his support for management buy-outs. At least we can agree on something. The East Kent bus company is due for privatisation shortly. My hon. Friend will know that when the Maidstone company was floated recently a French company, Galleon, put in a bid. I am happy to say that the Maidstone bus company was sold to the management and is now being run successfully.
The Galleon company is determined to establish a foothold at the English end of the Channel tunnel. I have no reason to believe that Galleon is not a good company, but I question whether its interests are in the best interests of the travellers of east Kent.
The management of the East Kent bus company would not thank me for suggesting that it is afraid of competition. It is an excellent management and is certainly not. But the management and we need to know that any bidder for the company will guarantee the service to the public. It will also need to know that any competition to which it is subjected will be on equal terms.
I understand that in order to operate a bus service in France a green card is necessary. In order to acquire a green card it is necessary to prove that a different market from any that currently exists can be developed, and that can take years. I also understand that in relation to longer routes in France objections are taken from railways and others and are always upheld.
The French bus and coach service is almost completely regulated and the French could not achieve in France what they would be given on a plate if they were allowed to purchase the East Kent bus company. I also understand that the protection given to West German coaches is even stronger than that afforded in France to the French.
I appreciate that the decision is one for Mr. Rodney Lund and the National Bus Company, not for the Government. However, I hope that my hon. Friend will remind the NBC that we look to it to protect customers and the interests of the United Kingdom within the terms of the treaty of Rome.
It will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in east Kent there is considerable suspicion that the Channel tunnel is likely to become a French benefit. That is partly because of French money poured into Nord Pas de Calais. However, it would be taken amiss if the French were permitted to succeed in a predatory bid for an English company that would not be permitted in France.

Mr. Richard Caborn: The Secretary of State said that the Government were instituting the new organisation of buses on a number of criteria. One was that there was a fall-off in passengers and another that there was a reduction in services. He listed, them all. However, he chose not to tell the House about a survey that was put in train by the Department of Transport some years ago. The Committee reports deal with the survey that was instituted in south Yorkshire where transport has developed differently since the middle 1970s. That report clearly showed that, using the resources of the United Kingdom effectively, that type of transport model was by far the most economic, and was socially and environmentally desirable. The Committee chose to ignore that. Indeed, to some extent it has been ignored today as well.
No Act has devasted south Yorkshire more than this Act. I shall try to explain the Government's political vindictiveness towards south Yorkshire and its people. We are now being asked to run our transport system on £59·3 million in the current year, of which some £7·5 million is a one-off payment for the massive redundancies that have taken place. So we are talking about £51·8 million. In south Yorkshire this year that has meant fare increases of 225 per cent. The service has been reduced by 10 per cent.,

there has been a drop in passengers of between 25 and 30 per cent., and more than 2,000 transport workers have been made redundant.
Over the next two years expenditure will drop from £51·8 million to £45·7 million—a reduction of 23 per cent. Under the Act we are obliged to make projections over three years and to organise the transport for three years. In 1988–89 expenditure will drop to £41·1 million. Between this year and 1989 there will be a reduction of some 40 per cent.
Under section 59 of the Transport Act and the scheme to transfer the assets and liabilities from the PTEs to the operating companies, the instruction—that is what it is—from the Department of Transport will cost the local authority £5·6 million. That is about 12 per cent. of the expenditure within which the Department of Transport has said that south Yorkshire must operate.
When the Secretary of State spoke to the local authorities some months ago, he said that he would meet any local authority that sought a redetermination. My local authority had a meeting last week with the Minister, but it got very little out of him.
South Yorkshire has had to go to law to extract the calculation of expenditure levels for its transport policy. Therefore, one wonders whether this Government are hammering south Yorkshire far beyond their hammering of the other ex-metropolitan counties. South Yorkshire seems to have been singled out for a reduction in expenditure levels of 23 per cent., whereas the remainder of the metropolitan counties have suffered a reduction of only 12 per cent.
The difference between expenditure levels and the grant-related expenditure assessment for south Yorkshire for 1986–87 has resulted in the authority receiving no block grant. The cost of transport is having to be borne, therefore, by the ratepayers. South Yorkshire has one of the best transport systems in the country. Tens of thousands of people use south Yorkshire's transport system. The Minister will probably say that grannies have been writing to him to thank him for the improved transport services in rural areas, but the major conurbations are losing out.

Mr. Allen McKay: Ought not the Minister also remember that, although accommodation that has been provided for elderly people by local authorities was formerly on bus routes, those services are no longer being provided? It is no use having a shiny, new bus pass if there are no buses. My hon. Friend knows that the village of Cawthorne has no medical services. It is dependent upon the medical services that are available in the next village. However, there is no bus service to take the villagers of Cawthorne to the next village.

Mr. Caborn: Yes, and that example can be repeated many times all over the country. Many of the examples that were given in Standing Committee were bad, and they will get worse.
It is no use Conservative Members saying that the system has been operating for only a few weeks. In January there will be a further decline in services. The inevitable result of the projected expenditure levels and the grant-related expenditure assessment will be a cut in services. In 1987–88, concessionary fares in south Yorkshire will have to be increased by 75 per cent. if the


load is to be spread. As for local rail fares—we have tried to create an integrated transport system—they will have to be increased by 10 per cent. The tendering for mileage will also have to be reduced by 5 per cent. The Government say that local authorities will be able to support unprofitable services, but they will have no money with which to support those services. There will be an inevitable decline, therefore, in transport services.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 people are now using saver cards. However, the attitude of certain private operators has led to their discontinuance. They will not accept saver cards. We had brought public transport within the reach of poor people, but the loss of the saver card means that they will be deprived of that form of transport.
The Minister would not even discuss meaningfully projected expenditure levels with the representatives of my local authority. If the burden is to be spread, concessionary fares will have to be doubled in 1988–89. Rail fares will again have to be increased by 10 per cent. The projected expenditure levels could mean that tendering for mileage will have to be halved for those contractors who want to take over the mileage.
In south Yorkshire, 80 per cent. of the population have no exclusive access to private transport. The area faces major unemployment problems. Last week I spoke in a debate in which the depth of the unemployment crisis was fully revealed. My constituency has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the country. Nevertheless, access to transport is being curtailed by this Government's policies. The social cohesion and well-being of the community have been considerably affected.
Traffic congestion in major city centres, particularly at peak hours, has to be seen to be believed. Loss of wages occurs because people are late getting to work. That leads to loss of production, about which employers complain. A fresh look will need to be taken at road planning in south Yorkshire if this Act remains on the statute book.
The effect on the voluntary services has been dramatic. Those who work for the voluntary organisations now say that they cannot help more than once a week, whereas previously they were probably helping three or four times a week. The dramatic increase in bus fares has also had a dramatic effect on employment patterns. It has affected in particular part-time workers in hospitals. They cannot afford now to travel across the city and carry on with that type of employment.

Mr. Robert Parry: Hon. Members who represent Liverpool have received this week a letter from the Sir Robert Jones Workshops for the Disabled. It points out that handicapped people in full-time employment are now paying more than £2 extra a week to get to work. Is this not a disgrace? Should not the Government take on board, therefore, the protests about deregulation?

Mr. Caborn: Yes. That point was made in Standing Committee.
In south Yorkshire the pressure on working people will increase. A family in Sheffield will pay on average between £10 and £12 more each week on fares. Their wages are their only source of income. The workers will put pressure on their employers, and wage increases will be reflected in the price of the products that they sell. Production costs will inevitably rise. However, it is very difficult to get this point

through to a Government who are following the dogma of the so-called free market. They do not have the sense to look at independent reports.
I am a member of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry which recently returned from a visit to the continent. We visited the Peugeot and Renault factories and examined the car components industry. I was asked how stupid can the Government be, with the Department of Transport deregulating while the Department of Trade and Industry cannot help the industry to deliver the new minibuses that the Government want the bus operators to use. Most of the minibuses, as happened with coach deregulation, are not British built. Most of them come from the continent.
The hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor) referred to the devastation in Solihull caused by the Government's policies. He referred to the fact that the motor manufacturing industry is having great difficulty in coping with the problems caused by their policies and said that there had been lay-offs. It is absolutely stupid that deregulation has led to the massive import of minibuses from the continent. It is costing Britain jobs.
This is one of the worst Acts to reach the statute book. It is the result of party political dogma and shows no regard for the people whom it is supposed to be serving. I hope that the many examples that have been given by Opposition Members will result in people voting for a Labour Government at the next general election. The Labour party is committed to repealing the Act and to returning to a sensible, integrated transport system for the people of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) said it all in an intervention when he remarked that one month after D-day is far too soon for this debate, because no one can make an objective comment on bus deregulation after about four weeks of operation. No hon. Member has argued that the change has made the system as good or as bad, depending on one's point of view, as the system that operated before. It depends on what existed before. If one lived in an area where there was already a variety of operators, the change was relatively smooth and a real element of competition and innovation came in. Where there was a single provider supported by a massive subsidy, clearly the change was more difficult, took longer and caused some of the problems about which the hon. Member for Sheffield. Central (Mr. Caborn) spoke.
I do not see why people living in south Yorkshire have a right to demand the kind of public subsidy which went into their transport undertaking and which was at the expense of my constituents and the constituents of other hon. Members. That public money had to come from somewhere, and it is quite wrong for people to vote themselves a service that will be paid for by somebody else. That also applies to people in Tyne and Wear.

Mr. Wareing: Ipso facto, does the hon. Gentleman agree that those of us who reside in urban areas might object to the massive subsidies given to farmers over the years?

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: I am tempted to ask the hon. Gentleman to translate "ipso facto", but I shall not. I come


from an urban area and I am aware of the problem that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but we are not here to debate whether public money should be spent on farming, on defence or on anything else. We are debating public transport, so let us stick to the subject.
Opposition Members talk as if complaints about public transport began on 26 October. Any hon. Member who says that there were no complaints about public transport before that date is treating other hon. Members as a bunch of fools. Of course people wrote to their Members of Parliament and to councillors complaining that local authority undertakings did not adhere to timetables. In the three or four years prior to deregulation responsible local authority undertakings experimenting with alternative services were constantly changing their timetables, and, no matter how hard they tried with free publicity, some constituents always rang up to complain that they did not know that a certain number bus was not running any more.
That process of change, a sensible process, was taking place before 26 October and there was nothing unusual about it. Opposition Members spoke about the absence of a timetable on 26 October. At best that was commercial incompetence, or at worst it was a deliberate act of political vandalism. The city of Nottingham serves a conurbation which is perhaps small by the standards of some hon. Members. It has between 500,000 and 600,000 people and our city transport undertaking has registered 97 per cent. of its routes. That is to say, 97 per cent. of the routes are commercially viable on the basis of a worthy accountant's report and were recommended by the then transport committee which is now the board of directors of the new undertaking.
I would not seek to mislead the House and I acknowledge that I am speaking about 97 per cent. of all the routes. I agree that route frequencies have changed and that we are currently dealing with some mid-evening gaps which are not commercially viable. The Bill makes it clear that those are precisely the areas which it is right for local authorities to examine and that, if necessary, they should put them out to tender so that a service can be provided.
In the county of Nottinghamshire, more than 400 routes were not registered and there was a predictable outcry from the controlling Labour group at county hall which said that that was the first problem about the new Bill—that over 400 socially desirable routes, especially in the rural areas, would no longer be serviced. But the Labour group put the routes out to tender and every one of those socially desirable routes has now been successfully taken up and our county council has made a reduction in what used to be its blanket subsidy of over £500,000.
That may not seem a lot of money, but the council has a choice. It can use the money to reduce the rate burden in the coining year or it can look further at routes that did not even exist before 26 October. In some parts of Nottinghamshire there are no bus services and that £500,000 can be properly used to service such routes in the same way as mid-evening gaps can be filled.
I am gravely suspicious of the noises made by hon. Members from Merseyside because where a local authority—and it is likely to be Labour controlled—has a vested interest in the failure of this Bill it will do everything possible to frustrate the Bill's purpose and will seek to make it fail. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Rubbish."] An Opposition Member says that it is rubbish, but I know that it is true.

Mr. David Sumberg: Is my hon. Friend aware that the situation in greater Manchester is exactly the same as the one that he has spoken about, because on its own admission the transport executive has over 5 million miles of unused bus routes that have still to he given out? Does he agree that that is a shocking indictment of the executive's managerial competence, and that it is also a shocking indictment that the executive has produced no proper timetables for my constituents? Is it not also disgraceful that the public transport executive in greater Manchester has not even provided bus drivers on routes north of Manchester but has moved people from the south? Does he agree that this is political chicanery and bad management?

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. It confirms——

Mr. Roger Stott: It has nothing to do with the debate.

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: Would you like to intervene?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. The hon. Gentleman must not invite me to intervene, although I should love to.

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg) is right and his intervention clearly illustrates the great dangers about which Government Members were conscious. If a local authority puts political dogma before its duty to its ratepayers, there will he trouble. I give credit to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), who at least had the courtesy to admit that in some areas local authorities are making an effort even though they are unsympathetic to the Government. I congratulate those authorities on making that effort.
I am worried about the role of the directors of the new companies, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will comment on this during his winding-up speech. One of the problems that I think he will find is that prior to 26 October the officers of the municipal undertakings were still employees of the councils and still subject to the pressures that could be put upon them by politically motivated city, county and metropolitan councillors. For that reason, those officers had to play things very quietly. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is wrong because those officers had a duty to the population to plan for 26 October and some of them were not allowed to do so. Now that those officers are executive directors with a commerical decision-making power, and given that the elected councillors cannot use their political clout to lean on them, I am sure that things will change.
Nottingham was the largest municipal undertaking in the country. We had a chairman of the transport committee with a vested interest in the failure of the legislation. He spent tens of thousands of pounds of public money doing all the things referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor), such as concessionary fares and so on. He spent £30,000 seeking to destroy the possibility of the Act becoming a success. Words almost fail me. That councillor is now the chairman of the board of directors which is running that bus company. Surely in commercial law no one ought to be able to serve on a board of directors if he does not have the interest of the company at heart and when everything he does seeks to destroy the very purpose of the Act. I hope that we can address ourselves to that matter.
I must refer to rural transport, because the nicest letter that members of the Standing Committee received came from the organisation Women in the Community. They wrote on behalf of rural areas that have no bus services, and said that the Bill would be a disaster. I had to reply, "If you have no buses, what harm can the Bill do?" The reality is that in those areas where there were no buses this Act had to be an improvement, however small. I believe that in many areas it will be a great boon, and I support the Government.

Mr. Eddie Loyden: The Secretary of State's remarks are indicative of the lack of understanding among Conservative Members about the far-reaching effects of deregulation on the lives of ordinary people. That view has been confirmed by the other contributions that we have heard from Conservative Members.
I do not want to be parochial, but the Government should understand that we have the responsibility of relating what is really happening on Merseyside and in other areas. Far from being parochial, we want the Minister to understand the problems that have ensued as a result of deregulation. They are real and are causing hardship, chaos and confusion in an undertaking which only a week before deregulation was reasonably well controlled and supplied a service.
For the life of me I cannot understand how Conservative Members can argue that deregulation has brought order which did not exist previously and has provided a better service to the people using public transport. On the contrary, the opposite is the case.
The constituency that I represent is nine miles from the city centre of Liverpool. In it are pockets of unemployment of 50 per cent., 60 per cent., and in some cases 70 per cent. or more. The people who moved there as a result of both post-war and pre-war housing developments are now virtually incapable of leaving their homes because fares have trebled and even quadrupled in the brief period since deregulation. That would not be so bad were it not for the fact that previous services have been severely cut. In other words, as a result of deregulation, they are getting a much worse service at a much higher price.
If that is the philosophy of the Conservative party, the Government should immediately repeal the Act, because the problem will not go away. The Act has caused concern because of its immediate impact—perhaps even more concern than any other piece of legislation introduced by the Government, most of which had been obnoxious in the eyes of the working class.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry) spoke about the Sir Robert Jones Workshops. That organisation cares for a section of the community over which the Conservative party weeps tears—the disabled and people employed in sheltered workshops who must travel to their place of work. The director of the Sir Robert Jones Workshops states in a letter:
It has been brought to my attention by the workforce that the people who are using public transport have as a whole had to pay £80 to come to work above what they were paying before deregulation. This works out at an average of £2 per worker

in order to use public transport post-deregulation which has been imposed by the Government. People working part-time in an industry of that kind will have to decide whether it is worthwhile travelling to work, given the impositions that the Government have placed on them.
The Government ought to think carefully about the wider ramifications of what the Act has done to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. There is, for example, the difficulty of parents accompanying their children to school, and many other problems have arisen. These problems do not affect only the constituency of Garston. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) will be similarly affected, as will the constituencies of other Liverpool Members, except possibly those who represent the city centre. People travelling to the outer estates to work will be affected. The Government have failed to understand the problems. In the past, it has been said that the Labour party is dogmatic, doctrinaire and so inflexible that it gives no consideration to issues that fall outside that dogma. However, if ever a piece of legislation smacked of dogma, it is this Act. Apparently no thought at all was given by the former Secretary of State to the effect of the Act on the travelling public.
In areas such as Merseyside, Yorkshire and the midlands many people still depend solely on public transport. I declare an interest as one such person. I do not own a car and travel by public transport. In the first week of deregulation, I wanted to go into town on a Sunday morning. I waited for one-and-three-quarter hours for a bus, and when it arrived I discovered that my fare had risen from 30p to 60p. On the following day, the fare was 50p.

Mr. David Mitchell: So that I can understand the position properly, is the hon. Gentleman saying that he waited all that time as a result of a new timetable, or was it merely that he did not receive a new timetable and waited for the bus according to the old timetable?

Mr. Loyden: The bus drivers did not know what the frequency of service was supposed to be, nor did they know what the fares should be.

Mr. Sumberg: Whose fault was that?

Mr. Loyden: It was the Government's fault. With great haste they imposed the Act on the transport authorities without giving them the necessary time to ensure that the travelling public were not adversely affected.
As anyone with any common sense understands, bus drivers who receive their schedules on Saturday morning ready for Sunday will find it impossible to absorb them and translate the information about fares to passengers. During one week I paid three different fares, and the majority of drivers were unaware of the correct fares.
I place the responsibility for that at the Government's door. Before the Bill became law, they should have given local authorities time to sort out the problems that would face the travelling public. Meetings are taking place in every part of the country because people are now aware of the full implications of the legislation. They are waiting for a further disturbance in services in January and, in all probability, further disruption later.

Mr. Wareing: My hon. Friend will be aware that in the first few weeks of deregulation on Merseyside there were more than 1,000 complaints. I have scrutinised some of


them. Is my hon. Friend aware that an enormous proportion of the complaints were about the lack of school bus services? For example, at the Maricourt school on the fringes of Melling and Maghull—an area not noted for selecting Labour Members of Parliament—children leaving school at 3.30 pm did not arrive home until after 5.30 pm. They gave up hope of getting the school bus and had to walk through dark pathways and lonely fields to get home—and this is at a time when we have cause for concern about children being attacked.

Mr. Loyden: I take my hon. Friend's point, although he took a long time to make it. He raised an important point about children. Indeed, the Government have made us aware of the muggings and other things that go on in the estates on the outer edges of cities. Because of the high bus fares, many women feel forced to walk through dangerous areas.
Many of the problems that have arisen were ignored by the Secretary of State when he designed this atrocious piece of legislation. I take some comfort at least from the declaration by the Labour party that it will place this legislation in the dustbin of history and give back to the public a decent transport system based on Labour ideology. I accept that there are ideological differences between the parties, but in the Labour party we agree that transport is a service which should not be based solely on profitability.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is a brief debate and the Chair is anxious that Members representing all areas of the country should have the opportunity to address the House. I appeal for brevity. The first Front-Bench speaker hopes to catch my eye at 6.30 pm

Mr. Robert Adley: I wish to ask the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) one question. When he goes to bed tonight, will he kneel beside his bed and ask himself the following question? Is his local authority—despite the fact that it is of a different political persuasion from the Government—making an honest attempt on behalf of the people it represents to make the most of the legislation passed by this democratically elected Parliament, notwithstanding that it may not like it, but bearing in mind that it is its duty to serve the people of Liverpool? Is the hon. Gentleman slightly concerned that the council, which until yesterday had Mr. Derek Hatton as its vice-chairman——

Mr. Wareing: Let us have some relevance.

Mr. Adley: This is relevant. The council is more concerned with making party political points at every opportunity, regardless of the effect of so doing on the people of Liverpool, whom it is supposed to serve.
Having said that, the House will know that I have not been an uncritical supporter of this legislation. It is foolish of either side of the House to paint this legislation as a panacea for all public transport ills, on the one hand, or the sole cause of every public transport problem that the country has ever known, on the other. It is not really a choice between euphoria and doom, and these are both poor guides for the debate tonight. The Government's main motivation has been customer satisfaction. That does not seem to me to be a matter of dogma. That is a perfectly proper thing for an elected body to seek to

undertake on behalf of those whom it is trying to represent. The question that we should ask is whether the customer is actually receiving satisfaction, or likely to receive satisfaction, as a result of this legislation.
I plead with Opposition Members, if they can bring themselves for a moment to consider public transport aspects of the matter, to recognise that all was not well with public transport and the bus industry. It is conceivable that there will be some benefits flowing from the legislation. I believe that it is perfectly conceivable that problems will also flow from the legislation. I hope therefore that we can regard the debate—and I hope that the Government will also regard it thus—as the first but by no means the last word on a subject that is of great concern to all of us, not simply those who, like myself, use public transport, but all who are concerned about the standard of life in the great towns and cities in this country.
Comments have been made about timetables not being prepared in time. I speak without any rancour. It is not just those local authorities which might be construed as having a grudge against the Government's politics which have fallen down on the preparation of timetables. Surrey county council, having taken it on itself to produce a timetable for one section of the Green Line bus routes, was unable to produce its timetables as far in advance as is normal when new timetables are introduced by public transport operators. Having said that, I would no more chastise Surrey than anyone else. My point is that it is fairly early days.
One of the problems, about which I have written to my hon. Friend, relates to the routes on which services are run commercially during some parts of the day and week, and which are tendered during other parts. The point is that the same routes are running the same services—for example, let us say that it is route No. 222 while it is commercially operated, but it becomes route No. 333 when tendered. That may be a logical position for an accountant sitting in his office, but it is very confusing for someone waiting to catch a bus. Surely, however, we cannot condemn the legislation already simply because of such teething problems.
In my intervention in the Secretary of State's speech I referred to London, which of course has not been fully deregulated. It lies ill in the mouths of Labour Members to accuse the Government of party political dogma when the present Government have nationalised London Transport. That is what has happened. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about it. We have nationalised London Transport and it is a publicly owned service. The Government have put the running of London's transport back into the hands of professional transport operators. The service has improved, the number of passengers is increasing and the amount of public subsidy required is falling. Surely that is an end earnestly to be desired by everyone in the House.
I want to mention some of the real problems that are arising about coach deregulation. I do not believe at the moment that the position is really satisfactory, especially in London and one or two other cities. Local authorities do not have the powers that they need to try to prevent coach operators from abusing their position by using roads and streets that are unsuitable for the size of coaches, by parking, very often illegally, in places that cause considerable inconvenience to other road users and cause considerable problems for the police.
The latest evil, which is a problem particularly in London, is the polluting system being employed by the commuter coaches, of leaving their engines running, sometimes for two hours at a time, in an unattended vehicle, to keep the atmosphere inside the coach comfortable for the passengers. Those are some of the aspects of deregulation that should be raised in the debate, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will look at them.
I refer penultimately to the effect of deregulation on other competitors, particularly British Rail. One of the reasons why I was less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic about deregulation was that I thought it might provide additional unfair competition for British Rail. We all know that at the moment there is no such thing as fair competition between a public service vehicle on the road and a public service vehicle on the rails, the latter having to pay all its own track costs and the former having them almost entirely funded by the taxpayer.
I was in Manchester yesterday, making a few inquiries of British Rail. I have to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg)—I am sure that he knows it, being an assiduous Member—that bus deregulation in certain parts of Greater Manchester has not yet been a total success, nor is it an unmitigated disaster. Already, however, one of the main beneficiaries is British Rail, which tells me that on some of its commuter routes into the middle of Manchester it is now picking up more passengers than it has had for a long time, and that on the Bury to Manchester route it is now running longer trains than for 20 years. So, as a supporter of British Rail, I am delighted that my qualms about the effect of the Act on British Rail have been proved wrong and that as a result of bus deregulation British Rail is improving its services and picking up more customers, although I suspect that that was not one of the Government's original objectives when they drafted the Bill. Nevertheless, it is welcome to me.
My final point is this. In this country we have always acted in haste with our transport policy. I do not believe that political dogma and public transport policy necessarily make happy bedfellows; nor do I believe that some of the decisions that we have taken in the past 40 or 50 years in our cities have resulted in improved public transport. I deeply regret the way in which we swept away the tram, whem most other European cities have been rapidly developing their tram services, which are pollution free, and, provided that they can be operated on separated tracks, as they are in many European cities now, are excellent forms of urban transport which we should encourage. The same goes for the trolley bus.
My plea to Opposition Members is: let us give this Act of Parliament a chance. In a year's time, let us see whether all their predictions of doom and gloom have been proved wrong or right. I say also to my hon. Friends: let us be a little less euphoric about what is happening now and let us have another look in a year's time and see how we are getting on.
Listening to the Labour party today, we could almost forget that we are talking about the public transport requirements of human beings—people wanting to travel around many of our towns and cities. That is what we should be talking about. The policy advocated by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) from the

Labour Front Bench can be encapsulated, like so many other Labour policies, in the words, "I am looking backwards for Christmas." I say to the Labour party: please do not do it. Give the Act a chance.

Mr. Jim Callaghan: In the light of your request to make our speeches shorter, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall endeavour to throw away a great part of the speech that I proposed to make about the chaos that has occurred and its effects on certain sections of our community. Let me mention one.
A month ago I was at a school, and at 4 o'clock the deputy head came to see the head teacher, full of consternation that the buses had not turned up for the children. I thought that it was an isolated incident. Later in the week I discovered in the local press that such incidents occurred in all the schools in the area. Last night my worst fears were nearly realised—I am glad to say that they were not completely realised. The Manchester Evening News stated that a little girl aged 11 had missed her bus and it had taken her four hours to get home. One can imagine the consternation of her family, who told the police, and the police thought the worst.
Is there anything that the Minister can do to ensure that schools have their proper allocation of school buses? This is the most vulnerable section of our community.
I shall not deal with old-age pensioners, nurses or the effect on trade in Manchester, but I shall go to the heart of the matter. The issues raised by the Greater Manchester transport authority with the Department of Transport on the re-determination of its expenditure level for 1987–88 are vital for the provision of a reasonable public transport service in Greater Manchester. There is no doubt that unless the Minister significantly increases the expenditure level announced earlier this year for 1987–88, which was £74·1 million, when the passenger transport executive and the passenger transport authority consider that expenditure requirements in that year will be about £87 million, further reductions in existing or planned levels will be inevitable. To prove that that will be so, we need only to look at the case in detail.
While all the new joint boards created by the Local Government Act 1985 are for the first three years precept limited, in the case of the PTA the Minister is empowered to determine an expenditure level that he considers appropriate for the PTA to discharge its functions. The expenditure level is used to calculate, first, the amount of block grant that the PTA receives for spending at that level and, secondly, the amount raised by the precept to make up the balance of expenditure. The precept, thus determined, becomes a statutory upper limit on the amount that the authority may raise in local taxes. It therefore becomes impossible for the authority to spend more money than the expenditure level as expenditure cannot exceed income.
In July the Secretary of State announced an expenditure level for the PTA of £74·1 million, which compares with £83·5 million in 1986–87, but the PTA has several statutory responsibilities relating to the provision of public transport in the area. I give concessionary fares for the elderly, children, the disabled and so on as an example.
The PTA inherited some debt capital projects from the former county council. So the PTA is developing the provision of special needs transport, for example, dial-a-ride community transport groups, all of which need


money. The PTA must also administer the system, and that costs money. It is also responsible for the increased pensions contribution for retired employees—a large item over which it has no control whatsoever.
The PTA and the PTE have had to incur substantial costs in the past year arising from the formation of Greater Manchester Buses Ltd. The bus company will need £19 million to cover the costs of redundancy and, in addition, the PTA has to give the bus company the assets that it needs to form a viable operation. That includes a cash injection of £11·9 million to meet the criteria laid down by the Department of Transport. The top cash requirements of the company are £30 million, of which the PTA can give only £2 million. Therefore, it has to borrow.
I know that the Minister has made it a little easier for the PTA to borrow over a longer period, but it still has to pay. If support for public transport in the metropolitan areas is reduced to the level proposed by the Secretary of State for Transport, the new PTA will be forced to withdraw support from the tendered services on a large scale. Concessionary fares schemes will be pruned and even greater hardships will be caused to the most vulnerable members of the population. The issue must be tackled in the current round of negotiations.
I wrote to the Minister on those matters on 4 November 1986. In the reply that I received on 20 November, the Minister said that he would give careful consideration to the case for extra money for the Greater Manchester transport authority, and that he hoped to announce his decision before the Christmas recess. I hope that his decision is such that the poor in our society will not be likening him to the ghost of Scrooge this Christmas.

Mr. David Clelland: Bus services all over the country are in chaos, but the situation on Tyneside is comparatively worse due to the abolition of the county council, which created and developed one of the finest integrated public transport systems in the world. The system was built by a Labour-controlled council but it was ultimately supported by political parties and Governments of all persuasions. The Tyne and Wear metro with its integrated bus services was a vision for the future and a pointer to the way forward in developing efficient modern public transport in the conurbations. Contrary to what the Minister said earlier, the Labour party is far from being trapped in the past. In Tyne and Wear it created a futuristic and efficient public transport system—as people with greater experience and expertise than the Minister acknowledge, fully supported by the people of Tyne and Wear.
The House may be wondering why I refer to the Tyne and Wear transport system in the past tense. The answer is deregulation. Since 26 October, as Labour authorities on Tyneside predicted, deregulation has destroyed integration and our once envied and enviable transport system would have been reduced to near shambles but for the public transport authorities and the local councils. Utter confusion has been created by the Government's Transport Act and their blind, dogmatic adherence to the belief that the market will improve services and cut costs.
The passenger transport authority and executive tell us that the single major problem for bus passengers in Tyne and Wear has been the failure of operators to run to timetable, due to a number of factors such as drivers and passengers being unsure as to details of journeys.

Yesterday's local morning newspaper showed a picture of a damaged bus with the headlines "Bus wedged under bridge" and "Wrong turning causes crash". That kind of thing is still happening 30 days after deregulation. The number of staff is inadequate to operate the registered services when sickness and other absences are taken into account and there has been a significant increase in congestion in all town centres and river crossing points. The same newspaper states:
The statistics speak for themselves. Before deregulation, 28 buses crossed the Tyne Bridge and 20 went over the Redheugh Bridge every hour. The respective totals are now 112 and 46".
That is a 400 per cent. increase for Tyne Bridge alone. The AA blames much of the congestion on
the spin-off from deregulation—motorists deserting the buses for their cars
and an AA spokesman is quoted as saying:
People have lost faith in bus schedules, and are now using their cars to get to work… The resulting increase in traffic means the rush hours, especially in the evening, have become a darn sight longer. And it's only going to get worse between now and Christmas.
The passenger transport authority states that bus crews are working in more difficult conditions with tighter timetables, lower wages and longer hours. The newspaper article states:
The new boys are having to work to stay in the market place".
One of them is quoted as saying:
We're working all sort of hours, but that's a sacrifice you have to make".
No doubt Conservative Members regard that as commendable and I am sure that the new boys are indeed working hard, but the danger to the travelling public is too often overlooked. Lest Tory Members think that we are exaggerating to discredit the Government, I will give two further examples of the effects of deregulation. The first illustrates just one of the many grim side effects of Tory transport policy.
The local newspaper of 11 November states that
irregular bus services on Sunday night may have been a factor in the street disturbance in which a mob of 200 men pushed police resources to the limit.
Five policemen were attacked during the fighting in Grainger Street and reinforcements had to be called in.
The subdivisional commander of police in Newcastle said:
The de-regulation of buses may have exacerbated the problem. People find they can't get the buses in the night. There just seems to be a dearth of public transport".
To show that all the criticism is not from the Labour party, I will quote the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Merchant) during his "poverty for publicity" week on the dole. The local newspaper states:
After only two days he claimed local bus services are in a shocking state—unreliable and irregular
and that he
said he was only now aware of the problems facing passengers.
I shall be interested to see how the hon. Gentleman votes today. People may well be confused about his attitude as on 7 November 1984, when the deregulation proposals were being discussed in the House, the same newspaper stated:
They were warmly welcomed by Newcastle Central Tory M.P. Mr. Piers Merchant, who claimed they would increase the flexibility of Tyne Wear's transport network, cut costs and boost efficiency.
The hon. Gentleman was then quoted as saying:
The Government's proposals will obviously be painful for the bus bureaucrats who run the PTE, but for the ordinary traveller they will be good news.


I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support our amendment today.
That is just a sketch of what is happening on Tyneside. If time permitted, I could cite many more examples of the inadequacies of the private transport system. The five local authorities on Tyneside are struggling to maintain a reasonable level of service, but as three out of the five as well as the transport authority itself are rate capped it is a desperate struggle. The Government, blinded by dogma, continue relentlessly with their policy. They now propose to cut transport services in the county by £7 million, with all the threats implied by that for subsidies and concessionary fares. This week, the transport authority has argued the case for maintaining at least the current level of expenditure. I hope that the Minister will see the sense and justice of that case, especially in view of his remarks today about the subsidy functions of local authorities.
The Government said that privatisation would mean more choice, but bus mileage in Tyne and Wear is down 7 per cent. We were told that it would mean cheaper fares, but the rejection of the through ticket system by private operators means that many passengers now have to make more changes and pay each time. In Sunderland, some child fares have increased by 300 per cent. We were told that there would be healthy competition for routes—the Minister repeated that today—but 80 per cent. of the service routes in Tyne and Wear attracted only one tender and the public authority's negotiation skill saved £1 million on the private contractors' original demands, 30 per cent. of which were described as grossly overpriced. We were also promised improved services, but 60 per cent. of metro-related integration has been lost as a direct result of deregulation.
When Ministers say that these are just teething problems, they really mean that after a while the public will forget the old system and get used to the new, and to that end Conservative Members will troop into the Lobby to ensure the continuation of this discredited deregulation. But people will not forget, because this is just one more example of the Government's systematic destruction of public services, whether they be health, welfare, education or transport services. When the general election comes, people will remember—and they will realise that only the Labour party appreciates the true worth of public services and can restore them to their essential position in contributing to a secure and civilised society.

Mr. Tony Speller: I have listened with great interest and enjoyment as colleagues on both sides of the House have spoken almost entirely about the metropolitan areas. Without knowing the detail, I understand their problems and complaints. From the rural areas, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), though rather against the legislation, said that it seemed to be working. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) made a speech without mentioning steam trains, which must be unique, and spoke of the excellence that he trusts that the future will bring.
I come from north Devon, in the west country. The transport system there works very well. I have no dogma on the system. As a youngster I travelled with the Devon General which became the Red Bus Company. It is now

the little Red Bus Company. It has many small buses zooming around. A private organisation also exists called the Country Bus Service. My hon. Friend the Minister travelled on the first journey of that bus company. The timetable went rather backwards as there were many sheep on the roads. None the less, a year ago, the Country Bus Service had one bus. Now it has five. It serves villages in the west country which never had a bus service—although that is not quite true. The villages had a bus service 25 years ago, but over the years I have watched it decline.
The train service has declined in quality because there is no competition. Frankly, the first great step forward was the competition between coach and long distance bus services. Now, praise be, we have a service that suits the consumer as opposed to the timetabler. I understand the problems of the timetabler, but my constituents and I have no doubt that there is now a bus service in some villages where there was no chance of one a few years ago. I do not know how that compares with the metropolitan areas, but in the rural areas—I can travel for 65 miles without crossing my constituency boundary—it is a most welcome improvement.
I have only two points to make because time always presses. It is unfair to say that if one accepted a privatised enterprise bus service one would accept errors and faults. Private enterprise makes no pretence at being perfect. It makes no pretence at being dogmatic. It just says, "Let us give it a try. If it does not work, let us amend it. Let us keep amending it until it works." That, frankly, is precisely the problem with public transport: it has been run for the convenience of the operator, the driver and the staff, not for the convenience of the public. That has now changed. If an operator does not suit the public, it does not receive fares. Private enterprise offers profit, but it also accepts loss. That is the vast difference.
I welcome the working of the deregulated system so far. As many of my hon. Friends have said, how can something be condemned after one month of operation? If the best use to which two or three hours of debating time can be put is to argue about legislation which is one month old, it is a rather sad case.
The little Red Bus service in north Devon has caused a political furore in the hothouse of Devonian politics. The prospective Labour candidate objected to an advertisement calling the little red buses "Rosie" on the ground that it was sexist—[Laughter.] I am not joking. The suggestion to "Take a ride with Rosie" apparently angered the Devonshire Labour party. That is the level of complaint against the privatised service. The service is working well. It is working for the public. It will get even better as time passes.

Mr. Roger Stott: I begin by referring to a quotation that was made by the Secretary of State when he responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes). He used the example of inter-city coaching as an example of a service where deregulation has worked. I say to the Secretary of State that one cannot compare inter-city coaching with stage carriage bus services. They are not comparable. Coach services used to pass through many cities, but that is no longer the case. Inter-city coaches now travel from London, up or down the motorway, to Manchester, Birmingham or Bristol. That cuts out many cities which


used to have the use of those inter-city coaches. The Secretary of State cannot use inter-city coaching as an example of good deregulation.
It is a pity that the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumherg) is not here, because he made some rather tendentious remarks a little earlier. I must tell him and other hon. Members that the bus companies now have an arm's length relationship between themselves and the passenger transport executives and the passenger transport authorities. It is not the responsibility of those bodies to roster bus crews. It is not their problem, but that of the bus companies. If the former Secretary of State had taken our advice in Committee and introduced deregulation more slowly, all the problems over bus timetables might not have occurred. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Brandon-Bravo), who sat through these debates, knows that only too well.
During this short debate on the effects of bus deregulation, many Labour Members have told the Secretary of State of the extent of the chaos in their constituencies since deregulation was introduced, and none more so than my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) who, in his maiden speech displayed a depth of understanding of the real problems of his constituency. He also showed that he has the compassion and the determination to represent the people of Knowsley, North in their fight for a better future for themselves and their families. I congratulate him on his maiden speech. I am sure that for many years to come the entire House will wish to hear him speak.
In a recent speech on deregulation to the Institution of Civil Engineers the Secretary of State said:
I think that overall the timetable has proved manageable, and the system is in place. I congratulate those in local authorities, and the professionals running the bus services and their advisers, who have made what is after all a fairly momentous change with so few significant examples of difficulty.
To put it in the modern vernacular, the Secretary of State was being extremely economical with the truth. The plain fact is that, overall, deregulation has been a disaster. It has not just been a disaster because it has been running for only one month. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South.167" who sat in Committee with me night after night, knows that Hansard is littered with our predictions about how the legislation would cause devastation in our public transport systems. He knows better than most that what we predicted would happen has happened. Opposition Members take no pride or pleasure in having to say that. The previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), was the author of this piece of lunacy.

Mr. Peter Pike: Although it is early to judge the legislation, may I say that the position will get worse, because many of the services which have been registered as viable, or which have been won on tender, will prove not to be viable on the basis on which they are being run at present.

Mr. Stott: That could be right, and the answer to my hon. Friend is that the Minister of State has acknowledged that point.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North said that he had a minute of the evidence of what the Minister had said, the Minister acknowledged that

fact. More routes have been registered as profitable, and come the early part of January, these routes will be considered seriously.
In a press release on deregulation, the Secretary of State said:
This change is necessary because for far too long the bus industry has been in decline. Bus travel is down by half in 30 years, fares are up faster than inflation and, ominously, faster than motoring costs.
The Secretary of State is falling into the same trap as the former Secretary of State when he talks about the bus industry being in decline. He is right when he says that it is in decline in areas which were controlled by Conservative county councils.
The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry), who was here a little earlier, told us how bus services had suddenly improved. The bus services in Oxfordshire were so lousy because Oxfordshire county council had one of the worst records on public transport before deregulation. Therefore, there was great room for improvement. To say en passant that bus services had been in decline is palpably untrue. The Secretary of State should recognise that.
In the metropolitan areas, bus services have increased during the past 11 years. Tremendous strides have been made by all those involved in introducing new buses, buses especially designed for the disabled, bus passes for old-age pensioners, through ticketing and other aspects of marketing. In addition, market research has been carried out with passengers to try to discover where bus stops should be located, the frequencies of buses, timetables and other matters.
I disagree entirely with the statement that bus services in the metropolitan areas had been declining during the past 11 years. If anything, they were increasing. My area, south Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and the west Midlands had a record in public transport of which they could be proud, but since the Government introduced this wretched legislation the people who used to have good bus services are having to suffer all these problems.
Hon. Members have commented on what is happening in their areas. At my surgery last Saturday, a lady said to me, "Mr. Stott, what are you going to do about the bus services?" It is rather ironic for someone to ask me what I can do about the bus services, since night after night, and day after day, I and my hon. Friends fought against the Bill. Recently, I was asked to speak at a public meeting in Kettering. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North mentioned this problem in his opening remarks. In Kettering, there is a fairly new bus station. The subsidiary of the National Bus Company used to operate out of that bus station, but because the Conservative-controlled county council will not give the new bus company enough money, it has closed the bus station in the centre of the town. The people of Kettering are having to queue for their buses in lay-bys, in the pouring rain. This is supposed to be progress. This is supposed to be the great panacea that will flow from the legislation.
This morning I received a letter from a pensioners organisation in Manchester. It states:
Unless there is a radical change in the present operation of the Transport Act, this coming winter will deprive many of them"—
old-age pensioners—
of the means to travel as comfortably and as frequently as they have done in the past. For some it will mean being confined to their homes for long periods, with all the social and physical problems that can accrue. The cost of


concessionary fares has now doubled for those who use cross-city buses, and with the waiting time for connections, so has the journey time. Pensioners are understandably seething with anger with the undermining of what was a reasonable and good public Transport System.
Had my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) caught your eye a little earlier, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he would have told the House that Mrs. Louise Ellman, the leader of Lancashire county council, said this in a recent press statement:
There is mounting evidence that Lancashire schoolchildren and students are suffering from bus deregulation. Complaints are pouring in from right across the county, including Blackpool, St. Annes, Lancaster, Poulton, Blackburn, Ribble Valley, South Ribble and West Lancashire. Some people are unable to make formal complaints because the telephone lines are so overloaded. Problems range from youngsters being turned off buses after their passes had been rejected, to buses simply not turning up and schoolchildren left standing out in the pouring rain.
One of my hon. Friends made a serious point about schoolchildren missing buses and being left out in the rain. Now that winter is coming on and the dark nights are here, we shall have to do something about it. The Secretary of State and the Minister of State will be held responsible if the provision of school services is not maintained at the levels that existed before deregulation. It is essential that children who go to school on buses are provided with buses on time and regularly. If they are not, it will be the direct responsibility of the Government.
Some of my hon. Friends have told the Secretary of State that their local authorities had approached him regarding external financing limits, grant-related expenditure assessment and the amount of block grant that they would get. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities estimates a shortfall of £50 million in all the metropolitan areas. If the Secretary of State is not persuaded by the arguments of the metropolitan authorities and this shortfall continues, the only way in which the money can be made up is by attacking concessionary fares.
That point was made forcefully by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). The Minister of State accused me repeatedly of scaring old people about concessionary fares, and he said, "The local authorities will have the money to do it." Now he must put his money where his mouth is, because if the authorities do not receive that money, concessionary fares will be threatened. The Minister will have to come up with the goods.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North told the House what the Labour party will do when it returns to office. I repeat that now, because public transport will be at the heart of our social policy. We shall put public transport back where it belongs—with the people of the country, through their elected representatives in the city and town halls. They will have a proper say in how public transport should be run. No one has taken out of context the comment of the previous Secretary of State for Transport, who said:
Gentlemen, you are now free to run your services without the constraints of a social conscience.
Oh boy, are they doing that now. When the Labour party returns to power, it will have a social conscience and it will put public transport back on the map.

The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): This has been a difficult debate for the

Opposition since they had to choose their timing carefully. A year ago, too many people in the Labour party were doing their irresponsible best to frighten people by suggesting that there would be major cuts in services. The Opposition were set back a bit when they discovered that three quarters of all existing services were registered as commercial, but it did not stop them. They went round saying that local authorities would be unable to afford to buy-in the remaining one quarter of services with the aid of subsidy. Again, the Opposition were trying to frighten people, especially the old and the less well-off—the most vulnerable members of society who depend upon buses. Again, they were proved wrong.
By 26 October, the commercial services registered in the spring had generally been overlaid and the gaps filled by a network of subsidised services. Despite it being the biggest shake-up in bus services for 50 years, in most parts of the country D-day passed off perfectly well because operators and local authorities did their jobs properly. Of course, one knows of places where many cases were reported, especially where the local newspaper paid £2 a letter for each case that came to its attention. Even Labour local authorities—I say this plainly—mostly behaved responsibly and efficiently and ensured that buses were there for those who needed them. Of course, in a minority of places there were initial problems, especially when deregulation day coincided with traffic management arrangements being revised, as in central Newcastle, or with road works, as in central Glasgow, together with traffic light failures and a major procession. There was a new pedestrian scheme in Leicester. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) may laugh about Glasgow, but where are the 11 Labour Members of Parliament representing Glasgow today? Are they leading the attack on the Government? Of course, they are not.

Mr. James Hamilton: rose——

Mr. Mitchell: This is the sole survivor, and he does not even come from Glasgow.

Mr. James Hamilton: rose——

Mr. Mitchell: I will give way only to an hon. Member who represents Glasgow.
The problems are beginning to fade. That is why the Opposition had to rush in this debate immediately the House reassembled and within a month of deregulation coming into effect. They have a fading asset. The debate takes place against that background. It also takes place against the background of less efficient operators being shown up and an opportunity for the public to see where local bus management is good. It has sorted out the men from the boys and it has inevitably shown where local management is bad. If local management is bad, it will act as a magnet for new operators. I wonder whether it is chance that a new operator is lining up 200 minibuses to bring into the south Manchester area.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North raised several points which, to be fair, I should like to cover. He said that we had hoped that many new operators would come forward. He is right, in that not as many new operators have come forward as we might have wished. But quite a number have stepped forward, and he was right to say that the 50 taxibus operators represent one form of innovation. He was also right to say that, as yet, the enterprise culture


has not led to as many new operators as we might have liked. However, I should be very surprised if the new year does not bring with it more operators.
The Department has recently sent out a leaflet for prospective new operators, explaining how to start in business—[Interruption.] The creation of new jobs and new business is something that we are not ashamed of. As a result of advertising, more than 1,000 applications have been received for copies of that leaflet. That bodes well for the long-term future.

Mr. Max Madden: Will the Minister look into the problems that face bus passengers in Bradford over Christmas and the new year as services are likely to be suspended? The west Yorkshire passenger transport authority has sought sponsorship from the brewers so that bus services can be run over the holiday. However, it seems unlikely that they will fund new services. Will the Minister look into the matter as soon as possible, and see what can be done to provide a minimum bus service in Bradford over Christmas and the new year?

Mr. Mitchell: I always like to respond as quickly as possible to hon. Members' requests. Accordingly, I shall go to Bradford tomorrow morning and will look into the situation that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North pointed out that we had said, during the Bill's passage, that we thought that drivers would become more helpful. He then quipped that it was the passengers who were having to become more helpful, because they were showing the drivers the routes.
The hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) cited the example of a bus that had got stuck under a bridge because the driver did not know the route. He and other hon. Members blamed the Government and the legislation for such mistakes. But they are, rather, the result of rank bad management, because companies did not train their drivers properly before sending them out on new routes. That is a matter not for the Government but for local management.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North referred to the months going by. So far, only one month has gone by and it is already clear that many of the problems that prompted the Opposition to table their motion are fading rapidly away—[Interruption.]—as local management tackles the problems. I shall come in a moment to some of the Opposition Back Benchers who are making such a cacophony.
The question of Glasgow was also raised. When we saw the photographs and television film of the traffic jams involving huge numbers of vehicles and buses in the centre of Glasgow on that Sunday, we did not see the traffic light failures, the processions or the other changes that made the congestion far worse than it might otherwise have been. An independent traffic commissioner has been approached by the highways authority and has been asked immediately to introduce changes. He has considered the situation, but the traffic has now returned to a sufficiently reasonable level for him to say that he does not consider it a matter for urgent decision, and so he will take it through the normal processes. That is a sign that things are not as bad as has been claimed.
I am glad that we then came to the subject of Lancashire, because I can deal with relish with what has been said about it. Lancashire county councillor Louise

Ellman has been crying stinking fish ever since she campaigned in the local elections. Perhaps I can put the quotation that was given in context. I said that several services have been registered as commercial which the operators may find, come January, are not commercial, and so they will seek to de-register them. It was reasonable of the county council to keep a little money back against that eventuality. However, there are several points to be made. Those services are only marginally unprofitable, as otherwise they would not have been registered by the operator as profitable. Consequently, the cost of buying them in will be very small.

Mr. Robert Hughes: The quotation that I used did not refer specifically to Lancashire. It was the Minister's advice to all county councils, and not just to Lancashire.

Mr. Mitchell: I accept that, but I have applied it to Lancashire. As the hon. Gentleman quoted that case, I shall take the Lancashire figures a shade further. The new cost of providing services in Lancashire will be £2,480,000. The old cost was £8,367,000. I am using pages five and six of a document from the clerk of Lancashire county council to all members of the county council's transport subcommittee. I should be happy to give the relevant information to the hon. Gentleman if he wants it.
The net saving was £5,887,000, as postulated in that internal document from Lancashire county council. As I have said umpteen times, Lancashire will save £5 million or more of ratepayers' money. It has £5,887,000, and so there is £887,000 to play with, and we shall still be on the credit side of my assurance. Consequently, I say to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North, with the greatest respect, that he has got things wrong.

Mr. Pike: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Mitchell: I shall not give way, as time is pressing.
I welcomed the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth). He spoke like an experienced parliamentarian. He also spoke with compassion about his constituents' problems, and was given a sympathetic hearing by hon. Members on both sides of the House. He may be surprised to discover the extent to which the whole House shares his concern for the problems of Merseyside. Hon. Members certainly look forward to hearing him speak again. He mentioned a lack of timetables on Merseyside, and I hope that he will make his views known to the passenger transport executive.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) gave a very fair account of the success of deregulation in many parts of the country. I thank him for his support for the sale of the Vectis bus company on the Isle of Wight to its own management. However, although he wanted to adopt the typical Liberal attitude of sitting on the fence, he felt that he had to mount some attack. The best that he could do was o pass on complaints from other parts of the country. He raised the question of operators' licences. I assure him that the licence system will continue along with all the checks involved and, moreover, we have increased the number of roadside inspectors by 22 per cent., which should be sufficient at the moment.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn) drew attention to the 225 per cent. increase in fares in south Yorkshire since the Act came into force—from a base of 10p for three miles. The rest of the country would consider it to be almost unbelievable that that fare level


had operated. The hon. Gentleman went on to say that south Yorkshire had cheap fares. Yes, fares were cheap for bus users, but they were damned expensive for ratepayers, for people whose businesses have moved from that area and for people who do not have jobs because of the high rates there. If people in that area knew that £60 per man, woman and child per year went into the provision of bus services, they might consider whether they would rather have the money in their own pockets to spend as they choose.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the expenditure limit and the consideration of the redetermination. We are giving it careful consideration. I cannot discuss it further today.
Leeds is another place in which there was chaos, but that was because timetables were not sent out on time. The PTE sought to blame everybody within sight, including the Post Office, until a contract was produced. That contract showed that the PTE had not asked for delivery of the timetables until after D-day. It is scarcely surprising that some people waited for buses that did not run. Some people used their cars and consequently there was chaos throughout Leeds.
A month after the biggest bus shake-up for 50 years, some things are becoming apparent. Broadly, the same network is being operated, with a temporary hiatus during which much depends on the competence of local management. In the past, a great deal of innovation was held down by the dead hand of regulation. Now, new minibus and taxibus systems are opening to provide better services for customers than has existed in many parts of the country. As the months go by, that improvement will spread to the areas from which the complaints have come.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 189, Noes 264.

Division No. 9]
[7 pm


AYES


Alton, David
Clelland, David Gordon


Anderson, Donald
Clwyd, Mrs Ann


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Cohen, Harry


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Coleman, Donald


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Conlan, Bernard


Barnett, Guy
Cook, Frank (Stockton North)


Barron, Kevin
Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Corbett, Robin


Beith, A. J.
Cox, Thomas (Tooting)


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Craigen, J. M.


Blair, Anthony
Cunliffe, Lawrence


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Dalyell, Tam


Boyes, Roland
Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Deakins, Eric


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Dewar, Donald


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Dixon, Donald


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Dobson, Frank


Bruce, Malcolm
Dormand, Jack


Buchan, Norman
Dubs, Alfred


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Duffy, A. E. P.


Campbell, Ian
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Eastham, Ken


Canavan, Dennis
Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Fatchett, Derek


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Cartwright, John
Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Fisher, Mark


Clarke, Thomas
Flannery, Martin


Clay, Robert
Foot, Rt Hon Michael





Forrester, John
Nellist, David


Foster, Derek
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Foulkes, George
O'Brien, William


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Freud, Clement
Park, George


Garrett, W. E.
Parry, Robert


Godman, Dr Norman
Patchett, Terry


Golding, Mrs Llin
Pavitt, Laurie


Gould, Bryan
Pendry, Tom


Gourlay, Harry
Penhaligon, David


Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Pike, Peter


Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Hancock, Michael
Prescott, John


Hardy, Peter
Radice, Giles


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Randall, Stuart


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Raynsford, Nick


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Redmond, Martin


Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Heffer, Eric S.
Richardson, Ms Jo


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Home Robertson, John
Robertson, George


Howarth, George (Knowsley, N)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Howells, Geraint
Rogers, Allan


Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)
Rooker, J. W.


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Sedgemore, Brian


Janner, Hon Greville
Sheerman, Barry


John, Brynmor
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Johnston, Sir Russell
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)


Kirkwood, Archy
Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)


Lambie, David
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Lamond, James
Skinner, Dennis


Leadbitter, Ted
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Leighton, Ronald
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'ds E)


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Spearing, Nigel


Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Steel, Rt Hon David


Litherland, Robert
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Livsey, Richard
Stott, Roger


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Straw, Jack


Loyden, Edward
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


McCartney, Hugh
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


McGuire, Michael
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Tinn, James


McKelvey, William
Torney, Tom


MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor
Wainwright, R.


Maclennan, Robert
Wallace, James


McNamara, Kevin
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


McTaggart, Robert
Wareing, Robert


McWilliam, John
Weetch, Ken


Madden, Max
Welsh, Michael


Marek, Dr John
White, James


Martin, Michael
Wigley, Dafydd


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Maxton, John
Wilson, Gordon


Maynard, Miss Joan
Winnick, David


Meacher, Michael
Woodall, Alec


Meadowcroft, Michael
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Michie, William
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Mikardo, Ian



Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Tellers for the Ayes:


Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)
Mr. Allen Adams and


Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)
Mr. Sean Hughes


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)



NOES


Adley, Robert
Batiste, Spencer


Aitken, Jonathan
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony


Alexander, Richard
Bellingham, Henry


Amess, David
Bendall, Vivian


Ancram, Michael
Benyon, William


Arnold, Tom
Biggs-Davison, Sir John


Ashby, David
Blackburn, John


Aspinwall, Jack
Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Body, Sir Richard


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)
Boscawen, Hon Robert


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Bottomley, Peter


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)






Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Harris, David


Bright, Graham
Hawksley, Warren


Brinton, Tim
Hayes, J.


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Hayward, Robert


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Heddle, John


Browne, John
Henderson, Barry


Bruinvels, Peter
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Bulmer, Esmond
Hicks, Robert


Burt, Alistair
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Butcher, John
Hind, Kenneth


Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam
Hirst, Michael


Butterfill, John
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Holt, Richard


Cash, William
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Chapman, Sydney
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)


Chope, Christopher
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Hunter, Andrew


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Irving, Charles


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Cockeram, Eric
Jessel, Toby


Colvin, Michael
Jones, Robert (Herts W)


Conway, Derek
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Coombs, Simon
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Cope, John
Knight, Greg (Derby N)


Cormack, Patrick
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Corrie, John
Knowles, Michael


Cranborne, Viscount
Knox, David


Critchley, Julian
Lang, Ian


Dickens, Geoffrey
Latham, Michael


Dicks, Terry
Lawler, Geoffrey


Dorrell, Stephen
Lawrence, Ivan


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Lee, John (Pendle)


Dunn, Robert
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Durant, Tony
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Dykes, Hugh
Lightbown, David


Eggar, Tim
Lilley, Peter


Emery, Sir Peter
Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)


Evennett, David
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Lord, Michael


Fallon, Michael
Lyell, Nicholas


Farr, Sir John
McCrindle, Robert


Favell, Anthony
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Macfarlane, Neil


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Fletcher, Alexander
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Fookes, Miss Janet
Maclean, David John


Forman, Nigel
McLoughlin, Patrick


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)


Forth, Eric
McQuarrie, Albert


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Madel, David


Freeman, Roger
Major, John


Gale, Roger
Malins, Humfrey


Galley, Roy
Maples, John


Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)
Marland, Paul


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Marlow, Antony


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Mather, Carol


Glyn, Dr Alan
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Mellor, David


Goodlad, Alastair
Merchant, Piers


Gow, Ian
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Gower, Sir Raymond
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Grant, Sir Anthony
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Greenway, Harry
Miscampbell, Norman


Gregory, Conal
Mitchell, David (Hants NW)


Griffiths, Sir Eldon
Moate, Roger


Grist, Ian
Monro, Sir Hector


Grylls, Michael
Montgomery, Sir Fergus


Gummer, Rt Hon John S
Moore, Rt Hon John





Morris, M. (N'hampton S)
Skeet, Sir Trevor


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)


Mudd, David
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Murphy, Christopher
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Neale, Gerrard
Speller, Tony


Needham, Richard
Spencer, Derek


Nelson, Anthony
Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)


Neubert, Michael
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Nicholls, Patrick
Squire, Robin


Norris, Steven
Stanbrook, Ivor


Onslow, Cranley
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Oppenheim, Phillip
Steen, Anthony


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Osborn, Sir John
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Sumberg, David


Patten, J. (Oxf W &amp; Abgdn)
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Pawsey, James
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Pollock, Alexander
Temple-Morris, Peter


Portillo, Michael
Terlezki, Stefan


Powell, William (Corby)
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Powley, John
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Thurnham, Peter


Price, Sir David
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Proctor, K. Harvey
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Raffan, Keith
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Viggers, Peter


Rathbone, Tim
Waddington, David


Renton, Tim
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Wall, Sir Patrick


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Waller, Gary


Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Walters, Dennis


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Ward, John


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Roe, Mrs Marion
Wheeler, John


Rowe, Andrew
Whitfield, John


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Whitney, Raymond


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Wiggin, Jerry


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Wilkinson, John


Scott, Nicholas
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Winterton, Nicholas


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Wolfson, Mark


Shelton, William (Streatham)
Wood, Timothy


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)



Shersby, Michael
Tellers for the Noes:


Silvester, Fred
Mr. Francis Maude and


Sims, Roger
Mr. Gerald Malone.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words he there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

MR. SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House congratulates the Government on its radical measures to arrest the long running decline of the bus industry by abolishing outdated controls and creating the conditions in which competition, innovation and enterprise can flourish and provide better bus services, whilst at the same time enabling local authorities to obtain value for money in subsidising socially necessary services, thereby putting the social and economic needs of the community and of the travelling public in the forefront of public transport policy.

J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): We now come to the second motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Frank Dobson: I beg to move,
That this House regrets the interruption of service to severely disabled people caused by the dispute at J. E. Hanger Ltd.; deplores the failure of Her Majesty's Government to end the crude intimidatory tactics of the owners of the company who have sacked 300 of their workforce; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to resolve the current crisis and secure long-term improvement in the standards of the artificial limb service.
This debate is about how a multimillion pound, multinational company is causing harm to severely disabled people in the hope of achieving a short-term advantage over some of its skilled, hard-working staff for the sake of private profit. For some years now there has been dissatisfaction with the service provided by the artificial limb service and concern about value for money. That was brought to a head by the findings and recommendations of the McColl report, but that cannot excuse the behaviour of BTR Industries, the owners of J. E. Hanger.
Amputees to whom I have talked do not complain much about the skill of the staff, or even about the standard of limbs or the skill of the fitters; they complain about the way in which the whole operation is organised and the way the service has declined since BTR took over. In other words, they complain about the owners and the managers. Typical of much of British industry today, those owners have not accepted their responsibility. Instead they have tried to visit the consequences of their failures on their work force and the limbless people whom the work force tries to serve.
It is typical of the Government to respond as they have done by saying, "This is not our responsibility. This is not our dispute. We leave it to managers to manage." That pursuit of blind Thatcherite ideology is bad enough, but it does not end there. It is wholly irresponsible and shiftless of Ministers to suggest that the Government have no responsibility to provide National Health Service patients with the service to which they are entitled. That remains a responsibility of the Government, whoever supplies the artificial limbs and does the fitting.

Mr. Toby Jessel: Surely the Government had the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service put in to resolve the dispute, which is exactly what ACAS is for. Therefore, it is false to suggest that the Government have neither intervened, nor involved themselves, and are not taking any interest in the matter.

Mr. Dobson: The staff of J. E. Hanger have wanted the dispute resolved from the minute it started. They have been suggesting that if an outside body needed to be involved, ACAS was the one. Despite everything, it took seven weeks for the owners of the company even to agree to go to ACAS. Those talks have made no progress whatever.
The matter does not stop there. The Government's assertions about their position are legally unsound—not

that there is anything unusual about that. The contract for supplying and fitting limbs is not between the company and those who need limbs, but between the company and the Government. The failure to provide a proper service is in breach of that contract, yet still the Government refuse to take resolute action to end the dispute which has been going on now for 10 weeks and one day.
The Hanger factory normally produces about 100 new or adjusted limbs every day, so the output lost by the dispute could, in theory, be over 5,000 limbs. The Labour party does not claim that the dispute has harmed that many people; we simply do not know. I suspect that Ministers do not know either. However, we know of individual cases.
A month ago I had to raise in the House the case of Mr. Rod Dixon, a constituent who was driven to attempt suicide by the pain from his ill-fitting limb which could not be properly fitted. Since then I have had contact with others, including Mr. John Baller who has appeared on radio and television during the past few days. Both his artificial limbs were broken. One is irreparable and the fitter cannibalised the two limbs to provide one adequate limb.

The Minister for Social Security (Mr. John Major): If the hon. Gentleman has been besieged with those cases, why has he not taken advantage of the offer I made to him and others when I responded to his private notice question and referred the cases to me so that we could give them the priority action that we undoubtedly would? Why not?

Mr. Dobson: I have referred to the Minister the cases that I have received from my own constituency in writing. I am now talking about those I have been in touch with within the last day in preparation for the debate. If he and his officials will sit and listen and take note, no doubt they will be able to do something for those people because they have not done anything up to now.
Mr. Baller needed to have one leg produced from the two he already possessed. That is unsatisfactory. He works for a living, and if that leg conks out he no longer has a spare. If the Minister is so quick to get to the Dispatch Box, he should undertake to ensure that Mr. Baller gets his spare leg tomorrow, or as soon as it is humanly possible to provide it. Otherwise, he is at risk.
There are other cases. I have spoken again today to a Mr. Hughes who told me that last time he went to the factory one of the people who was waiting was having a storming row with a fitter. He felt that it was unfair to the fitter because it was not his fault that he could not provide the connection to the artificial foot for that other person. The fitter was incapable of supplying that part of the artificial limb because of the fault of the management. I shall not go on because I know that some of my hon. Friends wish to raise other cases.
Even a month ago, when we raised this matter on the first day after the summer recess, the Minister apparently proudly told us that only about 50 appointments had not been fulfilled. That is all very well for a Minister, a civil servant or the chairman of BTR Industries, who gets about £200,000 a year, but it is not so smart for those 50 or so people who have not had an appointment. It is from that point of view that we have to look at this matter.
It would be fair to try briefly to describe how the dispute came about. In July the company agreed to discuss all changes in timings and work rates with the staff. It also


agreed to a procedure that would be followed in the event of failure to agree. Discussions went ahead, but in mid-September the company unilaterally ended discussions and announced the retrospective imposition of new timings and threatened disciplinary action against people who failed to meet the new timings, even though they had not known they existed and they were not in existence at the outset.
The joint shop stewards tried to activate the procedure which it had been agreed in July should operate in the event of a failure to agree. That was rejected by the company, and about 30 staff were threatened with disciplinary action. The stewards asked to be allowed to hold a committee meeting. That was refused. They asked to be allowed to hold a meeting of the full shop. That was refused. They therefore held a mass meeting off-site after 4 o'clock on a Friday. Despite it being 4 o'clock on a Friday, it was a well attended meeting. From the body of the meeting there were suggestions that the staff should impose an immediate overtime ban. The Committee, behaving responsibly, as elected representatives of working people nearly always try to do, persuaded the meeting not to impose an overtime ban because it believed that the agreement that had been reached with the company should be adhered to. In the event, that mass meeting decided to recommend that staff should not work on the immediately following Saturday morning, but that staff should make up their own minds. Six staff agreed to be at the gate to inform—I emphasise "inform"—anyone who was not at the meeting. I shall read the notice that was prepared to he handed out to anyone who turned up in case anybody here should suggest that there was intimidation. The notice stated:
An emergency meeting took place of the joint shops at 4 pm yesterday to bring all members up to date re standards of performance and verbal warnings. A ban on overtime was called for (and rejected) after the chairman said we should stay fully in procedure to try to allow full time officials to resolve the situation on Monday. It was agreed by all, each individual member should decide for themselves if they wished to accept any agreed hours over 39 hours agreed between the company and the unions. The chairman stressed that no action would he taken against any member working outside the 39 hours. As agreed at previous joint shop meetings. all members should have the opportunity to have full information to decide for themselves.
There was no intimidation and there were no threats. It was emphasised at the mass meeting and outside the gate the following day that if people, exercising their own judgment, decided to go in, it was up to them. In the event, only three people turned up for work. Two turned back, one of them joining the people on the gate because he so strongly supported them, and one person went in. On Monday, four of the six who had been on the gate were sacked. They were sacked for
coercing employees not to work overtime.
I urge the House to remember those words. Threats were even made to sue them for loss of production.
District union officials met the company, which refused to withdraw the dismissals but agreed to suspend them and hear appeals at 2 o'clock on Tuesday. A mass meeting agreed, with only two votes against, that if the four were sacked all members of the work force would withdraw their labour. The appeals were duly rejected by the managing director who had been party to the dismissals, breaching the rules of natural justice—not that they mean anything to a multinational company on the make. Having looked through the other companies that BTR

owns, those rules would certainly not apply to a multinational company which owns another subsidiary called the Frankenstein Group Ltd. At about 3.20 pm all the staff concerned went home. Within one and a half hours notices of dismissal were issued, which even included employees who were off sick or on holiday.
On the Thursday a secret ballot endorsed a campaign to obtain reinstatement for all concerned by 234 votes to 17. Thus, 300 skilled and hard working staff who had followed agreed procedures and who were provoked beyond endurance were sacked and the people they wished to serve were put in difficulties.
The company has subsequently made offers to take back 70 staff and give the statutory minimum redundancy terms to most of the rest. It says that it does not need such a large work force. How strange. The dispute started because the company accused four staff of coercing others not to work overtime. The company cannot have it both ways. It said that it needed a work force of 300 who needed to work overtime, and then a week or two later it said it had no need for over 200 of them to work at all. It is absurd.
It is no good the Government trying to wriggle out of responsibility, because the industrial boot-boy tactics deployed at J. E. Hanger, no doubt learnt from BTR's activities in its South African subsidiaries, arc precisely the sort of approach that the Government have encouraged. That must be what the Prime Minister means when she talks about the management's right to manage. People should remember that that is what she means.
That sort of behaviour raises major questions about the future. The artificial limb service needs to be improved. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris), with his wealth of experience and concern, will deal with that when he winds up the debate. Fundamental questions include: should profit-seeking companies be involved in limb fitting at all? Is it right for a multinational monopolist to be the overwhelming source of supply for a service vital for severely handicapped people? Are the current owners and managers fit to be responsible for such a service? Why have Ministers sat on their hands during this dispute, pursuing a policy of non-intervention, which is designed to help the management of J. E. Hanger?
In view of what has happened at Wapping, and in other industrial disputes, why did the Metropolitan police take no action when one of the management assaulted the wife of one of the people who is out of work and damaged the camera of a press photographer? Why have Ministers not used the Government's legal powers as party to the contract? As shown by the fact that the the Press Gallery is nearly empty, why have the British press been so silent about this dispute? When staff at J. E. Hanger were on strike 17 years ago, the press harassed and harried them up hill and down dale, outside the factory and to their homes. There was no stinking smear that the British press did not put on these workers. Why is the same attitude not taken to the odious toads who own this company?
Some of these are longer-term matters to which the forthcoming Labour Government will swiftly give their attention. In the meantime, the Government should remember that severely disabled people who need the products of J. E. Hanger's factories are not getting them. They should act now to end the dispute. The trouble is that DHSS Ministers are a cheap and nasty combination of craven and complacent. They are just not up to the task.


They would rather that patients suffered and workers and their families went without than risk offending the sort of acquisitive multinational company on which the Prime Minister dotes.

The Minister for Social Security (Mr. John Major): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
regrets the interruption of service to severely disabled people caused by the dispute at J. E. Hanger &amp; Co. Ltd.; urges the management and workforce to resolve this dispute without delay; notes with approval the Government's initiatives to minimise inconvenience to patients; and congratulates the Government on the action it is taking to secure long term improvements in the standards of artificial limb services".
The House has been treated, if that is the correct word, to a speech that was partisan, contemptuous, mischievous, contentious, and ill-informed and one that will do nothing to bring a resolution to this dispute. That was not the purpose of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson).

Mr. Frank Cook: The Minister is not interested in resolving the dispute.

Mr. Major: That is exactly the point. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras is not interested in the resolution of the dispute. He is interested in causing the maximum amount of difficulty that he can in these circumstances. His was nothing more nor less than a picket line speech, clearly learnt when he has visited a picket line, and not with the intention of resolving the dispute.

Mr. Dobson: rose——

Mr. Major: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a minute. He has already made sufficient blunders, but I shall give him every opportunity to make more. While the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) sits jabbering at the back like a monkey on a pole, he will not get an answer to the questions that were asked. Should he care to listen, he might do so.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras spoke of a number of cases, some of which he clearly looked for in the past 24 hours to use in the debate. I look forward to getting the details of those cases as swiftly as possible—tomorrow morning I hope. We shall see whether he is as swift in giving me the information as we shall be in putting it to good use.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Minister will not do anything with the information when he gets it.

Mr. Major: It is nice to know that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is with us this evening. I hope that he will make a sensible contribution rather than utter his usual nonsense from a seated position.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras referred to his constituent, Mr. Rod Dixon. He did not mention—perhaps it has slipped his mind—that Mr. Dixon has been seen at Roehampton and is happy with the adjustments that have been made to his limb. I am sensitive about the cases of those who have been inconvenienced by the dispute. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Mr. Baller but not that the case had been picked up some time ago and is already substantially in hand. I am pleased to say that Mr. Baller will shortly have

his limb. We have taken a series of material measures to ensure that we give priority to people facing such difficulties.

Mr. Dobson: As I have been pressing for a resolution of this dispute for a long time, when will I have a reply to the letter which I sent to the Secretary of State on 8 October?

Mr. Major: The hon. Gentleman says that he has been pressing for a resolution to the dispute. He has a curious way of doing so when he addresses the House as though it were a picket line. I shall examine where the hon. Gentleman's letter is tomorrow morning, and we shall see what the position is.

Mr. Skinner: Tomorrow morning?

Mr. Major: I see that the hon. Member for Bolsover is making his usual intellectual contribution to our proceedings. It would be agreeable to see the hon. Gentleman, sitting there in his hacking jacket as if he were about to go shooting with the Duke of Devonshire, make a proper contribution to the debate.
If the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras had been interested in a resolution of the dispute, he might have taken the example of other hon. Members, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), the Minister of State, Home Office, who has been in daily contact with both me and others to ensure not only that we get the best possible patient care, but that there is a solution. It might be helpful if the hon. Member were to take such a helpful attitude.

Mr. Martin Flannery: Get on with it.

Mr. Major: If the hon. Gentleman would listen, I would be able to get on with it, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman could encourage his hon. Friends to listen so that we could make a little more progress.
Before I respond to some of the specific concerns raised by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, and the wider issues that follow from them, I shall set out the nature of the dispute and the Government's views on it. Despite the hon. Gentleman's mischievous remarks, this is an industrial dispute between a management and one part of its work force. As such it must be settled between them. It is not a dispute between the Government and management of J. E. Hanger, or the Government and the work force at J. E. Hanger, and I regret that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras does not seem to have understood that. I emphasise that the Government are not a direct party to the dispute.
However, neither are the Government uninterested in the dispute, for our interest is in patient care, while the dispute continues and beyond. It is for that reason that I urged the two sides to refer the matter to ACAS when I replied to the hon. Gentleman's private notice question on 27 October. I was pleased that they speedily did so after that exchange. Discussions took place at ACAS on 7 November, 18 November and again yesterday. Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman said, I understand that some progress was made yesterday, and as a result a further meeting will be held next Wednesday. I hope that between now and then no one, notwithstanding the poor example set by the hon. Gentleman, will imperil those talks, and that they will be successful next Wednesday.
So that there is no doubt whatever about the Government's position, I make it clear that I urge both the company and the trade unions—I draw no distinction between them—to continue to meet and talk until they get a settlement. I have no doubt that both the company and the work force have an obligation to resolve the dispute without delay.
As the House knows, the Government have been pressed to intervene by the Opposition and the motion effectively endorses that decision. I have considered that option seriously but rejected it. I do not propose to intervene directly, because such action might become counterproductive. In any event, ACAS exists for such assistance, and is now being actively used, with a fourth meeting taking place next week. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman appears to have so little faith in it.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: Does the Minister really think that the dispute started as recently as this? Might this have something to do with the possible loss of the company's monopoly position for providing lower limb prostheses?

Mr. Major: The hon. Gentleman touches on matters that are directly germane to the McColl report, to which I shall refer later. I did not say that the dispute started on the date that I mentioned. I said that on that date I urged both parties to go to ACAS, and that soon afterwards they did so.
Although I do not propose to intervene in the dispute, I do propose to take sides, and I propose to take the patients side. It is a pity that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras has not taken such a practical step. The patients are my primary concern and they will remain so. Until the dispute is settled my concern is to minimise its effects on patient care. I do not underestimate for a second the effect in human terms of a delay or inconvenience caused as a result of the dispute to any individual who depends on the artificial limb service. It must be deeply distressing for the patients and nobody could, or would, deny that.
It is important to keep the general position in perspective. At present, the service has about 62,000 patients, of whom 53,000 are lower limb patients. Each week, across the country, there are between 2,500 and 3,000 patient appointments for measuring for limbs, for fitting, repair or for some other service. The House will know that most patients have their limbs prescribed for them, manufactured and fitted in workshops in the regional limb centres. Patients from those centres are generally unaffected.
The main effect of the dispute is being felt by patients at the Roehampton centre. Because of our concern at the delay created by the dispute, we have examined all the files for the 3,000 Hanger patients at that centre, and have found there are just 300 or so, who appear—I stress the word "appear" because inquiries have not yet been completed—to have been affected in some way by the dispute.
We are giving priority to the cases of greatest need to children, to primary amputees, and to anyone who is immobilised because he has perhaps just one leg that requires repair or replacement. Special arrangements have already been made, or are being made, for 116 such priority cases. Any further priority cases will be given similar urgent treatment.
The House may wish to know that this morning I met Dr. Hiddleston, the managing director of J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd., to confirm that the company is taking all possible steps to maintain its services to our patients. I sought from the company, and was given by the company, an assurance that priority action is being, and will continue to be, taken in urgent cases. I have subsequently instructed my officials to keep in the closest possible contact with the company to monitor the process and progress of such cases.
I am also concerned that, with 62,000 amputees to care for, one cannot be certain that some are affected of whom we are not aware at present. Therefore, I wish to take the opportunity to say yet again that I hope that any patients in difficulty will not hesitate to contact their local limb centre in the usual way, so that, if necessary, we can bring our emergency arrangements into play and make arrangements to deal with their needs as soon as possible.
I repeat to the House generally the offer that I made to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. If any hon. Members have specific instances of such difficulties, I hope that they will inform me without delay so that we can deal with them. I do not wish any patient to he inconvenienced if we are able to assist.
The dispute is clearly causing difficulties, which is why we wish it to be concluded as soon as possible. However, we should not lose sight of the improvements currently being made in the limb service following the publication of Professor McColl's report earlier this year.

Mr. Skinner: The Minister has just said that he met one of the doctors from the firm this morning, presumably to get some information relevant to the debate. Am I right—although the Minister has not yet mentioned this—that, in view of all the suffering, he called upon Dr. Hiddleston to allow people to get back to work? We have not yet heard whether the Minister made that request. Perhaps he will let us know at the end of the debate. We want an assurance that the Government, who came to power just after the so-called winter of discontent, said this morning to that company director, "Will you take back these people?" Could we have that assurance?

Mr. Major: The hon. Member for Bolsover is asking me to take sides in the dispute, and that is precisely what I have told the House I am not prepared to do however hard he may press me. I told the managing director of Hanger's that I expected the company to continue negotiations at ACAS, that I wanted to see a settlement as soon as possible and that I wanted priority action to deal with any urgent cases to minimise patients' inconvenience. Surely there is no doubt in anybody's mind that that is the Government's position [Interruption.] I am not on anybody's side.
I referred a moment ago to Professor McColl's report published earlier this year. It is clearly an exceedingly important report, to which the attention of the House has been drawn. We have still to reach conclusions on many of the major matters raised by the report. I hope to do so shortly and to advise the House of that as soon as possible. However, many operational and management changes have already been made in advance of the structural decisions on the McColl report and they are proving worthwhile.
The motion before the House calls upon the Government to secure long-term improvements in the limb service and I assure the House that we are as committed


to that as is any hon. Member. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras can agree on that. Much has already been done. In particular, we have implemented a number of significant management changes to improve the limb service prior to the structural changes of ownership, and the related matters remaining. We have established a disablement services division, with its own general manager, a new director of operations, and a new director of procurement from the NHS, and a coherent line structure.
We are already using computers to improve patient and limb order information and for stock control purposes and have commissioned Coopers and Lybrand to undertake a consultancy study to identify the scope for further improvements. As a result of this, we have placed a contract with McDonald Douglas for the purchase of microcomputers for each artificial limb centre to hold patient details and up-to-date local information on delivery times. We hope that this will be operational in January and will enable us to identify and eliminate delays more effectively.
We are also taking urgent action to improve transport arrangements for patients and are testing initiatives—some in collaboration with local ambulance services—at various limb centres with a view to general implementation. I am also considering the possibility of a specific budget for limb centre transport to enable local solutions to resolve local problems.
I emphasise the changes—some of which are proving helpful during the dispute—to emphasise the high importance that I give to improving the service that we can offer to patients, even before we have reached conclusions on the structural changes recommended by Professor McColl.
Other changes are in hand. We are developing new strengthened management arrangements for each artificial limb and appliance centre, with a view to devolving more responsibility and discretion on local management to provide a good service at local level to patients. The emphasis must be on the delivery of service to patients, rather than on the central bureaucracy.

Mr. Michael McGuire: The Minister has listed the improvements towards which his Department is working, and mentioned that other improvements are in the pipeline, or being talked about. Are the Government prepared to give a cash allowance for double leg amputees who may have to pay for the adaptation of the cars with which they are supplied under Motability? Adapting car controls for double leg amputees is costly. Is that one of the changes that the Minister has in mind?

Mr. Major: I was referring to the structural changes that are taking place in advance of McColl. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McGuire) is discussing an important matter, but it is a social security change which is important to the patients, but unrelated to the McColl report. Therefore, it is not part of the changes that we are considering.
We have also set clear objectives for the contract arrangements between the Department and all the artificial limb manufacturers. Last April, we put foward proposals for new contractual arrangements to the industry. Those proposals took account of the recommendations of the McColl working party, and of the

concerns which the companies have expressed about the arrangements. They were based on separate contracts for the manufacture and fitting of artificial legs. The proposals are intended to lead to greater decentralisation—where desirable—and to a quicker and more flexible service to patients. They will make it possible to introduce competition into the business, either in the manufacture or fitting of artificial legs, and thus ensure that we give value for the taxpayers' money that is spent on those services.
There have been extensive discussions with the industry since we put forward the proposals. I have been deeply disappointed that its initial reaction was not more constructive and that it has not yet been possible to reach agreement on the way forward. But I have no doubt that the objectives that we have set are right and that they provide a sound basis for improving the service in the future and we shall pursue them. [Interuption.] Let me interrupt the no doubt exceedingly interesting conversation that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras is having because I am delighted to be able to tell him that a reply to his letter of 8 October was dispatched on 30 October and is no doubt somewhere in his files.
One aspect of the new contract proposals will be to enhance the role and status of prosthetists who fit artificial limbs. That is clearly important—I am glad that I carry the hon. Gentleman with me on that—because many of the difficulties experienced by patients arise from the difficulty of getting the artificial limb to fit correctly. For that reason, we have initiated discussions about the future training of prosthetists and are considering jointly with the Prosthetics Training and Education Council and the artificial limb industry how we might develop a centre for prosthetic training in England which has some of the good features apparent at the Scottish national centre at Strathclyde.
One consequence of our contract proposals should be to improve delivery times for artificial limbs, but we are also taking immediate action on that. Discussions with the industry have led to agreement to start a pilot project at Nottingham centre to test a system where delivery times and patient appointments are fixed flexibly in relation to the individual patient's needs. I hope and expect that that project will start in January and that it will lead to major improvements.
Another area where I see room for improvement lies in the range of artificial limbs available from the service. That range is already considerable and many of the systems developed in Britain are world leaders, such as the Endolite and Ultra-Roelite modern modular limb systems and Steeper's remarkable powered arm equipment. However, we remain anxious to improve the range of limbs available to patients and so have decided to introduce a lightweight plastic version of the patella tendon bearing conventional limb which is already available in Scotland, and was proposed in the McColl report. We are also testing the range of lightweight modular limbs manufactured by Otto Bock to establish whether they offer a useful addition to the range of limbs available to our patients.
A few days ago I took the opportunity to visit one of our regional limb centres to meet and talk to the staff and patients and to see at first hand the work that is being done there. Much of it is excellent and I came away impressed by the dedication and concern of the staff. It was clear at that limb centre, as I believe it is at others, that the distressing dispute at Roehampton has not generally


affected the work done elsewhere, and that is entirely welcome. I hope that that remains the case in the future and that a satisfactory settlement at Roehampton can speedily be achieved.
I have no doubt that the dispute at Roehampton is causing distress, although thus far we have been able to minimise that. I hope that soon we shall have a settlement and will be able to eliminate the distress. But while it continues our central and prime objective will be to protect patient care.
It was precisely for that reason that I asked, as the House well knows, for daily reports on the situation at Roehampton and throughout the limb centre. It is precisely for that reason that I saw the management of J. E. Hanger this morning and, if necessary, I shall see them again if matters deteriorate. It was for that reason that we established the special arrangements that I have set out to deal with difficult cases and it is for that reason that I once again urge the company and the unions to reach a swift settlement. Nothing less will be acceptable. We wish to see a swift settlement. I hope that the two competing sides in the dispute want a swift settlement. Above all, the patients need a swift settlement. The two sides to the dispute have an obligation to meet and to talk until they have reached that settlement.

Mr. Jack Ashley: The Minister has just accused my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) of being interested in causing the maximum difficulty. That is an absurd charge, because my hon. Friend made a constructive speech. The Minister is rather confused. He told the House that this is a matter primarily for the trade unions and management concerned and that the Government have no real role in it, yet he spent half his speech boasting about what the Government have done. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot try to shrug off responsibility on to workers and management, and at the same time boast about the Government's accomplishments in the dispute.
This is a deplorable dispute. It is one of the saddest disputes that I have ever known, not only because of the intransigence of the mangement, but because of its terrible impact on disabled people. It is clear that the pressures resulting from the McColl report are having their effect on the firm. This report has played a major role, if not in causing the dispute, at least in sparking it off.
I hope that the management is listening when I say that sacking workers for going on strike is outrageous. It is becoming a common managerial tactic, and it will rebound on management. There is one lesson that all managements should learn, and this management in particular. It is that sacking a work force and agreeing only to reinstate a proportion of them before negotiations take place is a recipe for prolonged industrial misery. It simply will not work. Apart from the selective unfairness of that tactic, there is a basic trade union principle of no victimisation. That is something that management must never forget. When that tactic is tried, there is always the suspicion, to put it no higher, that active trade unionists will be victimised and excluded. I had personal experience of that when, years ago, I participated in strikes and the workers always stood together. The management in this case is making a grave error of judgment and the sooner it changes its tactics, the better for all concerned. That is one way forward.
The Minister was putting forward a naive and misleading argument when he said that this was a matter for the workers and management alone. That is not the case, because the firm's major customer is the Government. Obviously, the Government have a major role. They are not only considering the McColl report, as the Minister has readily acknowledged, but are taking steps, which he has just adumbrated in the Chamber, to do something about the situation. Therefore the Government have a prime responsibility. Terms of contract are being changed and they directly affect the firm, and many more changes, as the Minister has just said, are in the pipeline.
I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State replies to the debate he will answer a few questions. First, what sort of pressure is the new general manager putting on J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd.? Secondly, what is the Health Service management board's role in the dispute? Thirdly, why are Hanger and Vassa suing the Government?
There is a rather murky whirlpool behind the bland statement by Ministers and others that this is just another industrial dispute,. This is a Government-related dispute, and the Government cannot shuffle off their responsibility. The House has a right to know what sort of pressures are being exerted by whom, and on behalf of whom, and whether by the Government and on behalf of the Government.
I want to make it clear that I do not object to the Government intervening. It is important that they should intervene in the system for providing artificial limbs. However, I am worried about the purpose of the intervention. If its purpose is to reduce the profit margins of this firm or to increase its efficiency, that is fine. The case for that is indisputable, and we have to thank Professor McColl for it. He has revealed excess profits and the need for increased efficiency. However, if the purpose of the intervention is to cut Government resources and to lower the standards of this vital service for disabled people, it will be bitterly opposed.
This industry has rendered a great service to disabled people. I echo Professor McColl's tribute to the dedication of the staff involved. They have been marvellous. Also, I pay tribute to Professor McColl for highlighting some of the weaknesses and for offering suggestions for change.
Let me describe to the House what I have done. I read the McColl report in detail, and the all-party disablement group discussed it with Professor McColl. We were very impressed by the report. Therefore, I tabled an early-day motion calling for the immediate implementation of the McColl report. It received wide support in the House. However, after visiting Roehampton, at the invitation of the trade unionists there, to meet them and the management, I suggested to the Secretary of State on 30 July that he should delay taking action on the report until the views of the trade unionists and the management and any other interested parties had been discussed and perhaps debated. Four months have passed, and we are now having this parliamentary debate. It is time to end the uncertainty that is unsettling the industry. The case for change has been made and generally accepted. Everybody knows that change is coming, so let it come quickly.
The motive for change is crucial. It must he solely to provide a better and a more efficient service. There must be efficiency, but not cuts masquerading as economy. Improvements must be made in the transport system. I am glad that the Minister for Social Security said that he was


attempting to improve it. Improvements must also be made in the appointments system, which is a shambles. People have told me that after waiting all day they have been sent away without satisfaction. We cannot tolerate that for seriously disabled people. The system of delivering limbs is also bad. That too must be improved. Many of the weaknesses have been revealed by Professor McColl.
There is one other problem that extends beyond the confines of this particular debate. Surgeons involved in amputations must take account of the problem for those who are to have limbs fitted. I have been told that some surgery is not attuned to the requirements of a comfortable fit for prosthesis. It is claimed that in as many as 37 per cent. of cases the amputation precludes the fitting of a comfortable limb.
The background of all these changes must be recognition of the fact that artificial limb provision is a bespoke service. The patient must have adequate choice. Specialised provision and individual fittings are vital. We will not accept, under any circumstances, a few standard National Health Service limbs, with the best ones available only for private patients.
It has been demonstrated that it is unsatisfactory to provide only standard hearing aids instead of individual hearing aids. We are also moving rapidly towards a deplorable private sector provision for spectacles. We cannot have private provision for artificial limbs. They are too important to be standard products that are not tailored to the needs of the individual disabled person.
One vital change that would also help is a change in management. At present, civil servants are supposedly in control. I am not blaming civil servants. I am just stating a fact when I say that they have not been in control. In the interim period, we have a Government general manager whose role is far from clear. The question is whether control should be exercised by civil servants or by a management board. Other more wide-ranging alternatives have been suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. I know that the trade unions are not in favour of a management board, but I should prefer a management board in the short term to feeble control by civil servants. In the longer term we must re-jig the whole system and make sure that never again will there be a monopoly by one firm or by a few firms in the provision of limbs for severely handicapped people. That must be done. Then we must move forward and ensure that disabled people have the finest possible artificial limbs. That is their right.

Mr. Peter Temple-Morris: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). He made a number of interesting points. I shall refer to some of them during my speech. He asked various questions that were directed at the Government Front Bench to which he wants answers. He will get them from my hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security.
First, let me explain my presence here. As most hon. Members know, when I address the House I usually inhabit the more tranquil area of foreign affairs. I come to this debate from the rural fastness of Leominster because I have an interest to declare. I am the salaried

parliamentary adviser to Intermed and therefore to J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. [Interruption.]. I thought that that would result in a reaction from the Opposition. At least those on the Liberal Bench only smile and do not exclaim. I was appointed last April, though not to be an advocate in this dispute. I was appointed in succession to various hon. Members who had held the appointment before me. Because of the sheer volume of dealings that Intermed and J. E. Hanger and Co. have with Government, Parliament and the Department of Health and Social Security, it is right and proper that they should have an adviser. It is also important that in this debate their case should be stated.

Mr. Skinner: What does the hon. Gentleman get?

Mr. Temple-Morris: I am being paid £5,000 per annum. I am in no way embarrassed by the hon. Gentleman's question. If he asks similar questions, I shall reply to them. If he intends to continue to interrupt me, I hope his interventions will be less personal than his first. But he will get his answers. The atmosphere that he endeavours to create in this kind of debate does not help us to reach a settlement.
I appreciate that I have to be partisan in this debate, but I intend to state in as fair and dispassionate a way as I possibly can the case for Hanger and to suggest a sensible way forward in trying to reach a practical solution. When patients are involved, the last thing that I want to do is to turn this into a hack party dispute.
As for the basic situation, a bitter industrial dispute exists. I do not intend to go into the rights and wrongs on both sides of the dispute. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) referred, quite rightly from his point of view, to the rights and wrongs of the dispute from the trade union point of view. I could provide a great catalogue from the other side. I could refer to the difficulties over co-operation. I could also refer to the efforts over two years to modernise, to the lack of co-operation, to demarcation disputes, even to arguments over the air conditioning system. However, I do not intend to do so.
There have been a large number of dismissals because of the dispute. I hope that all hon. Members agree that the dispute must be solved in the interests not only of the workers—I put them right at the beginning—but of management and, above all, of the patients. We all have a duty to help.
I am delighted to see in his place my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), the Minister of State. For once in his political life, because of his distinguished ministerial role, he is rendered speechless in this debate, although as the hon. Member for Putney he is probably more anxious about the situation than any other hon. Member. I can say with authority that he has been in constant contact on behalf of all his constituents with the management and work force at Hangers. Officially, the work force is not permitted to come and see my hon. Friend, but I am delighted to know that he maintains contact with that work force and that he has its interests at heart.
Since the start of the dispute my hon. Friend has been in contact with Hangers several times a week trying to get a solution. It is sad that he cannot speak as an hon. Member in the debate and I would certainly not pretend to make a speech for him. If he could speak as an hon. Member he would probably deal even more vigorously


than I can with a somewhat odd publication which I gather has been leafleted around his constituency today. It is a salubrious journal called the West Putney News. Apparently, it comes from an organisation called the Putney Labour party. This misleading publication says:
While Putney MP David Mellor supported the sackings, Peter Hain and local Labour councillors demanded their reinstatement, and pressured both management and the Government to end the conflict and settle the dispute.
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for saying that I think I have his agreement when I say that that is absolute and utter rubbish. It is an example of party political means being used in an effort to take advantage of a problem which we should all be trying to solve. There is no question of my hon. Friend supporting any sackings.

Mr. Alfred Dubs: rose——

Mr. Temple-Morris: I shall give way in a moment.
My hon. Friend has made his position clear in the constituency. Obviously, he wants a practical settlement and the best possible offer, in employment or in financial terms, for the work force and for his constituents.

Mr. Dubs: The hon. Gentleman is assiduous in defending the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor). We understand why the hon. Member for Putney cannot speak for himself, but will the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) comment on an extract from the Wandsworth Borough News of 21 November. It says:
Meanwhile Putney MP David Mellor has urged the sacked workers to adopt a 'more flexible' negotiating position.
Is that a fair quote, and what does it mean?

Mr. Temple-Morris: I cannot carry on a vicarious dialogue for somebody else. If my hon. Friend the Member for Putney said that, he was quite right because we need more flexibility on both sides. In ACAS at the moment—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) hisses. I should have thought he would want flexibility in seeking a solution. I am delighted to say that, whatever he may think, and whatever the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) may think, both sides are beginning to show flexibility. It is not for us to go into the details of negotiation before ACAS, but there seems to be some flexibility, and that is the best way towards a solution.
I shall try to state fairly the main elements of the practical situation. It has hardly been mentioned, let alone stressed, that overall we have a most important classic situation which has, sadly, been repeated in other parts of British industry—new technology and its effect on traditional labour practices. A traditional and distinguished craft has been practised for many years by a distinguished and highly skilled work force, but now, sadly, the role of that work force is diminishing, although it will not end.
Some three quarters of current demand is for new modular limbs and not for the old type of traditional and conventional limbs. I am not an expert in this field, but I know that machines and computers are required to make those limbs and their manufacture does not require as many craftsmen as the old type. Therefore, there are fewer jobs.

Mr. Carter-Jones: It was said in an intervention that at one moment people were sacked for not working overtime

and the next moment they were sacked because the company did not want as large a work force. That seems to be a contradiction in terms. The hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) would be well advised to look at the causes of this dispute and at the point that the contract has not been signed or agreed. He should look at those issues when examining the matter of employment.

Mr. Temple-Morris: I shall certainly look at the issue to which the hon. Gentleman directs my attention. I know that he has followed closely the history of this dispute and that we are in his area of interest, but from whatever side one looks at this matter one sees that there is a certain, almost awful, inevitability about what has happened and about the clash that has taken place. It is not just a matter of dismissals because problems were building up for some time. It is important to take the situation as it stands. There is no point in harking back and going into great catalogues of calamity perpetrated by one side or the other.
I have dealt with the technological and practical aspect of the matter and I now want to speak about the reaction of Government to this problem. It has been a gradual build-up and the reaction is that, dare I say it, of any Government, because in the use of resources we must have the best value for money. I say somewhat critically that the old cost-plus system that existed under successive Governments between the DHSS and management and workers was somewhat cosy. As a result of a number of factors, including especially the policy of Government, the McColl report and management, that sort of relationship is finished and the pressure is on for a new and better system.
That has led to several things happening during the build-up to the dispute. The first was price negotiations in December 1985, and it is fair to say that in some quarters the Government's proposals at that time were called somewhat severe. However, in the circumstances, they were necessary in the drive away from cosiness and towards efficiency. There were abrasive negotiations, and objectively it is fair to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Putney played a large part in them. Indeed, it was thanks more to him than to anyone else that the basic settlement was considerably improved with price increases of between 6 and 8 per cent.
Parallel with the price increase and following shortly after it, we had the McColl report and its implications. The terms of reference for the people who prepared that report were to examine and look at ways to bring about better quality and better management, and to promote efficiency and cost effectiveness. Subject to Government reaction to that report, many hon. Members want it to be examined in more detail in the House. Its recommendations stress competition and—this is relevant to Roehampton—the report stresses decentralisation.
Following the publication of the McColl report, and rightly linked to it, new DHSS contract proposals appeared on 15 April. I shall not enumerate them, but their effect upon Hangers and upon any management was considerable. Those completely new contract proposals were aimed at getting the best deal for the patient and greater efficiency. They were to be implemented by the end of this year, and that is highly relevant for Hangers. Because of what has happened, it is now likely that they will not be implemented until the middle of next year.
The pressure was on management and union alike and the management had no option but to try to modernise because such changes must come eventually. As hon. Members have said, the management started consultations with the work force. The consultations went on between April and September 1986, which was after the introduction of the new proposals. The work force had all the natural fears of job losses and technological changes and those fears came to the fore, the work force dug in and no progress was made in the consultations. We then get the sequence leading to the dismissals and the situation that we face today.
I wish to stress—and it would be a good thing if it sank home—that there are no longer 300 jobs at Roehampton. It is all very well to say, "Let us go back, boys, and then we will talk", but the 300 jobs are no longer there. As part of the original proposals to settle this matter there would have been more than 80 jobs, but the extra jobs that could have existed over and above the 80 have dispersed around the country in order to deal with the dispute. Incidentally, the way in which Hangers has dealt with it nationally has been very creditable indeed—[Interruption.] It is all very well for Members on the Opposition Front Bench to laugh, aided and abetted by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). That does not surprise me.
The Minister of State referred to some detailed figures, and I compliment him on doing so. I concede straight away that obviously there is potential suffering—I dare say actual suffering—and difficulty as a result of a situation such as this. There is no way in which anyone can pretend that everybody is as well as if nothing had happened, but so far that suffering has been very limited. It was indicative that on the "Today" programme this morning the best that could be done in terms of producing a patient was to get someone whose two legs had been made into one and who at least was mobile. Indeed, everyone's mobility has been maintained by Hangers.
Hangers is supplying 80 per cent. of the service, and that proportion is increasing. We are therefore dealing with the remaining 20 per cent. which is delayed. However, it is moving. As the Minister said, there are 3,000 appointments a week throughout the country, but only about 70 deferred appointments. That is not at all bad.
There are three kinds of limb—the modular, the conventional and the complex to deal with congenital deformity. The latter is a problem area, and in that respect Roehampton is much more necessary than any other part of the country. The modular limb accounts for 75 per cent. of the current trade. There is no reason for delay. Such limbs are easy to produce, and they can be produced elsewhere. The difficulty can therefore be narrowed down to the conventional and special limbs, in respect of which great care is taken over priority for children and the extremely disabled. There is spare capacity throughout the country which increasingly is being used.
I appreciate that the situation is difficult and that I cannot provide an ultimate answer. However, Hangers is doing its best. It has dealt with all communicated emergencies. It knows of no patient who is immobile. Anyone who is immobile need only get in contact with Hangers or the local limb centre, and action will be taken. I give the Minister and the House an undertaking on

behalf of Hangers that it will do all it can to maintain the service, and it will co-operate in any way in respect of any individual case.
As for the work force, the official line is, "All back to work and we will talk about it." We are deluding ourselves if we think that that is practical. The fact that the ACAS talks are going on is an indication of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney has made it clear that, while all the work force cannot necessarily be reinstated, we must go for a practical solution and the best possible deal for the work force.
That brings me to ACAS. There is no option but to work within ACAS, and the fact that that is being done is good news. There was an introductory meeting on 3 November followed by two substantial meetings on 18 November and 25 November. I believe that yesterday's meeting went on for two and a half hours. Both sides have made proposals to each other, and both sides are considering them. The next meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday 3 December.
The main thing is that the parties are talking. It is important that no hon. Member should exacerbate the conflict so that either side might be tempted to think that it can get a better deal than is possible in all the circumstances. The people represented on the management side are quite prepared to do all that they can to achieve a settlement. They realise the importance of it, but we must bear in mind the practical situation that I have outlined. It must be a realistic settlement, but a settlement is perfectly possible.

Mr. Michael Meadowcroft: I am not sure whether the debate will improve the prospects of settling this dispute or whether it shows the House at its best. The speech of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) was way over the top and will do nothing but exacerbate the difficulty that we face. The Minister may have been lured into it, but at times he responded in like manner, and that again does not help to deal with the dispute. I also wonder whether the discussion of an industrial dispute across the Floor of the House is the right way to assist in the process of conciliation that must follow in any kind of dispute.
A particularly nasty part of the motion refers to
the crude intimidatory tactics of the owners of the company".
It may be that those words are true——

Mr. Dobson: Has the hon. Gentleman ever been sacked?

Mr. Meadowcroft: Twice, actually. If the hon. Gentleman will interrupt from a sedentary position, he should beware of the reply that he might receive.
Even if the words that I have quoted are true, it does not help to solve a dispute by referring to events that are history. The question in any dispute is how to solve it, rather than to refer back to the very things that are part and parcel of the problems that the company faces.
The Minister said that the Government were on the side of the patients. Everyone is. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras is, and I accept his bona fides. That is why he has tabled the motion. I disagree with its terms and with the way in which he introduced it, but nevertheless he is on the side of the patients.
It is also crucial that we should be on the side of ACAS. If we are to have a body such as ACAS in industrial


relations, and if we are to rely on it for the kind of action that we now expect to be taken, it is vital to support that body in its work rather than make its job more difficult. I do not see how some of the comments made tonight have assisted the cause of ACAS.
As the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) said, the debate falls between two crucial meetings—one yesterday and the other next Wednesday. I do not understand how it can be suggested that some of the comments that we have heard will assist ACAS in its work. We should recognise that it is nonsense to suppose that after reading Hansard one side or the other will capitulate and say, "Now that we read it in Hansard, of course we were wrong. Of course we will give way."
This debate is important, not because of the vote or the wording of the motion, but because of the signals that it will give to the participants in the dispute. Even if the company has behaved as badly as has been suggested, the crucial question is whether this debate adds to the bitterness that is part and parcel of the dispute. There is clearly a lot of confusion within the company, the work force, the management and, it would appear, the Government about what is happening in the dispute and the means of settling it. For example, there is a crucial distinction between whether the company and the Government are relying on market forces as the way forward, or whether they are relying on Government direction of the company via the NHS. That is the crux of the dispute.
The personnel manager of Hangers wrote to the work force on 24 October and said:
in order to re-establish a viable business and restore consumer satisfaction, it is essential to reorganise the company".
The personnel manager was talking about market forces. However, unfortunately for that point of view the Wandsworth Borough News on Friday 21 November reported the managing director of Hangers, Dr. James Hiddleston, as saying:
the DHSS now wanted the majority of limbs to be produced at Hanger's branches and not the central Roehampton factory and had changed contract procedures.
As a result the Roehampton factory can no longer support a workforce of 300 people.
If that is true, it has nothing to do with market forces. Rather, it is related to the NHS and the Government's decision about the future structure of the industry—and therein lies the Minister's problem. He may say that he is not part of the dispute—and that is perfectly true—but he has a part to play. The clue to the problem lies in the words of the managing director.
The Minister referred to the McColl report and its contents. It is important that we consider that report and the way in which it has an impact on the dispute. The key phrase in that report occurs in paragraph 54:
We were surprised to find no evidence of competition on price between the companies, and when we attempted to inquire further into the so-called cost-plus contracts we found it impossible to compare costs per item supplied between one company and another.
There we have it. Hon. Members find themselves in difficulty when discussing the dispute. They must decide where the balance of interest lies—between sorting out the problem and assisting the work force, which is part and parcel of that decision, or solely behind finding the best solution for the client, the patient, wherever that can be met.
The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) said that he had enjoyed meeting Dr. McColl, and had enjoyed reading the report and thought it very valuable. Does he accept the problem faced by the staff at Hanger? If the implications of reorganisation that a rise as a result of the report mean that the work force of 300 cannot be sustained, it is crucial to recognise that that leads to the problem of the industrial dispute that we face. It is difficult to say on the one hand that McColl is right and good, and on the other that the work force is right and deserves to have its case made. It is impossible to have both.

Mr. Ashley: As the hon. Gentleman is playing a good tune at the moment, I must tell him that, when I said that I agreed with some of the points in the McColl report, that did not mean an overall endorsement of the report. I do not want to be placed in the false position of accepting parts of the McColl report and thereby being blamed for its being instrumental in the dispute.

Mr. Meadowcroft: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman made that distinction, which is important to the debate. If he is drawing attention to the splendid work set out in the report in the types of provision, but distancing himself from its commercial aspects, that is a useful contribution to the debate.
The Minister has a role to play in the dispute over the question whether he has been dilatory in his response to the McColl report. If it had been possible for the Minister to respond earlier, it is conceivable that we might not have been here this evening discussing the matter. In reply to a private notice question on 27 October the Minister said:
I am urgently studying its recommendations together with the comments made on it, not least by the Royal College of Physicians in its report on physical disability. I shall endeavour to produce conclusions and proposals for action as soon as possible and shall naturally keep the House informed as soon as conclusions are reached."—[Official Report, 27 October 1986; Vol. 103, C. 24.]
That is fine as far as it goes. However, in the light of the problems, and in light also of the distress that has been caused, it is strange that the Minister has not come forward sooner with his comments on whether the restructuring of the commercial implications set out by McColl will happen. It is impossible to settle the dispute at Roehampton without the context of the dispute being settled by the Minister. Will a solution lie in market forces, through the DHSS, or through some way in which direction will come from outside the company and the work force?
Originally the Government made no commitment to take up any of the report's 49 recommendations and referred it instead to the National Health Service management board for comment. However, on 11 April this year the then Minister with responsibility for the disabled, now the Minister for Health, announced the Department's plan to deal with some of the problems identified in the report through the appointment of a civil servant—Mr. Ian Burns—as general manager of the DHSS disablement services. On subsequent questioning of the Department's real intentions behind that appointment, and its general position with regard to the McColl report, the Minister has been somewhat evasive. Sadly, the Minister did not today deal with that aspect of his involvement with the problem.

Mr. Carter-Jones: The hon. Gentleman has made an extremely valid point. We are all talking about


implementing McColl, but in some respects the decision to establish this other Civil Service committee to a large extent sabotaged the McColl report.

Mr. Meadowcroft: That adds to the point and increases the problem. Given that we must accept the bona fides of hon. Members on both sides of the House that they want the dispute settled, and to improve the supply of appliances to the unfortunate people who need them, we must consider the ways and means of achieving that.
In conclusion, the Minister must act to clarify the future of the industry and its structure and establish where the NHS imperative lies in relation to the industry's structure. Although it is a pity that he did not do that this evening, the Minister must come forward as quickly as possible and make conclusions about McColl and its implications for the structure of the industry, because that is of great significance to the dispute. If the Minister were to do that quickly, it would assist ACAS, the work force and the management to produce a conclusion to the dispute in the best interests of all, and in particular of patients.

Mr. John Whitfield: The dispute at and the circumstances surrounding the business of J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. contain all the ingredients that explain what has been so wrong with Britain in the post-war era which this Government, since 1979, have done so much to correct. The description of the position at Hangers that we have heard tonight reveals that there is still much work to be done to change the attitudes of managers and work forces in some parts of British industry. It also shows how important it is that a Conservative Government be returned at the next general election. The position at Hangers provides support for the argument that the Government should make maximum use of their time in office and not go rushing off to the polls before they need to do so. We need all the time that the electorate has made available to change the sort of attitudes of which the dispute at Hangers is a sorry example.
In this debate we are concerned about attitudes with regard to the way the DHSS should be managed as well as the attitudes of trade unionists and of contractors to the DHSS. The McColl report revealed that there was a great deal wrong with the artificial limb services. A damning indictment is contained in the second paragraph of the summary of the main findings and recommendations. Professor McColl and his working party discovered that as
inquiries continued we became increasingly conscious of the large numbers of customers who were not satisfactorily served, of the dignity and patience with which many of them endured unnecessary pain and discomfort and of the apparent complacency with which this situation was regarded by many, but not all, of those supplying these services. Although we were told at the outset that there was a great degree of satisfaction with the supply of artificial limbs, a recent survey showed that 23 per cent. of amputees complained of uncomfortable limbs. We were told there was no need to consider foreign limbs because the British limbs supplied to our patients were unequalled. Evidence we received showed that this was far from the case in terms of making comfortable sockets to fit amputation stumps and aligning the limbs correctly… British amputees are restricted not only to limbs made in this country but often to only one of three suppliers; and to make matters worse 50 per cent. of new limbs are delivered late.
Professor McColl further found:

After careful examination of the contracts which the limb manufacturers have with the DHSS, we came to the conclusion that they—
the DHSS itself—
are not capable of controlling the costs, prices or profits of the companies.
That view was confirmed by Coopers and Lybrand, which added that
in many areas the system appears to reward inefficiency and delay while providing no incentive for suppliers to make improvements.
The working party further considered the position of the companies supplying the artificial limbs and concluded that there was virtually no competition between them. Faced with those widespread deficiencies, the working party unanimously concluded that
only a total break with the current organisation and its historic evolution could jolt these services into the state of caring efficiency which is required and which we are sure that the taxpayer, who funds them would demand.
One would have assumed that the Opposition would be as concerned as the Government about the findings of the report and would urge the earliest implementation of the recommendations of Professor McColl and his working party for the benefit of the 63,000 amputees in the community. But not a bit of it. We have on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) early-day motion 43, principally concerned with the 300 sacked workers at Hangers as opposed to the many thousands of long-suffering amputee customers. In the motion that we are now debating in the name of the Leader of the Opposition there is a suggestion that the Government should intervene and require Hangers to reinstate the whole of its work force to resolve the current so-called crisis.
I have no doubt that the 63,000 amputees will find it incredibly uncaring of the Opposition not to have referred to the McColl report in either of those motions. Professor McColl and his colleagues discovered about the limb makers—J. E. Hanger is the principal one—the following matters. In its detailed recommendation No. 25, the committee recommended:
The suppliers and manufacturers…should be responsible for their products' fitness.
To a lawyer such as myself, it seems a fairytale world where a manufacturer is not responsible for the fitness of his product, particularly when that manufacturer's own technicians, the prosthetists, are involved in designing and fitting the limbs for their individual amputee patients.

Mr. Ernie Ross: It is clear that the hon. Gentleman does not know how the industry works. Does he not know that there is an individual relationship between the fitter and the person who receives the limb, on a weekly and daily basis? Does the hon. Gentleman understand how the industry works?

Mr. Whitfield: That is exactly what I was saying. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman could have been listening to me. I said that, because of that personal, daily relationship, it is extraordinary that so many of the limbs do not fit the patient.
The second point that the McColl report made about the limb makers related to customer service. At paragraph 34, McColl found that the manufacturers themselves admitted that 50 per cent. of all limbs were being delivered late, and 40 per cent. of major repairs and 25 per cent. of


general repairs were behind schedule. There was evidence that those figures understated the position. The report went on to say:
Within the average, however, are concealed some shocking delivery delays. We were moved by the distressing evidence of individual cases of delay and the modest and self-effacing way they were put to us. These delays are not just exasperating. They can of themselves cause further delay in rehabilitation, because stumps can and do change over time and a cast taken 6–8 weeks before delivery of the socket may well not fit at all so that the process has to start all over again.
The Committee found:
The companies are failing to deliver many limbs within the limes specified in their contract. They are therefore in breach of contract…even the agreed delivery times are too long. The major cause of the delays arises from the central fabrication of sockets and limbs in the contractors' main factories.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) said, that is the central cause of the dispute.

Mr. Carter-Jones: I should like to tell the hon. Gentleman, who is labouring a little, that it was his hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) who realised that that was happening and over four years ago invited Professor McColl to lead the committee. That was the causal factor. Those worries were there all the time. The report has vindicated the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green.

Mr. Whitfield: I am not sure how the hon. Gentleman's point relates to my speech. I would go along with what he says. The point that I am trying to make is that little emphasis has been placed on the recommendations and findings of the McColl report and far too much on the labour relations side of the dispute. No detailed analysis has beeen made by the Opposition of the reasons behind that difficulty.
The committee's harsh criticism hardly fits in with early-day motion 43, urging the House to recognise that the work force, including the managers at Hangers, have
always shown outstanding devotion to the care of disabled people.
Before anyone says that the criticisms that Professor McColl has made do not apply to Hangers, let me remind the House that the latest recorded figures show that Hangers and its closely associated company, Vessa Ltd, supplied 78 per cent. of all lower limb patients, 69 per cent. of new lower limb patients, and took 73 per cent. of total orders for new and replacement limbs and 79 per cent. of total orders for repairs. Not surprisingly, McColl found that market concentration to be unhealthy and recommended that the market should be opened up to new entrants by encouraging new companies and their different limb systems and by actively encouraging individual prosthetists to set up business independently. McColl further found that there was no evidence of competition on price between the four—or really three—companies that supply limbs and that it was impossible to compare costs per item supplied between one company and another.
It is instructive to note the enormous gap between the industry's perception of itself and the findings of Professor McColl. In its evidence to McColl, the industry claimed a competitive entrepreneurial spirit that in no way conflicted with service to the patient.
Therefore, the situation as McColl found it was pretty unsatisfactory. First, the artificial limb and appliance centre services were not efficiently managed. Secondly, the

limb manufacturers, particularly Hangers, were enjoying a cosy and profitable monopoly, and had done for many years. Thirdly, the monopoly was not in the interest of the taxpayer, but, more importantly, it was certainly not m the interest of the 63,000 long-suffering amputees. The monopoly was and is being enjoyed at their expense.
Amputees have made several representations to me in my constituency, and I have received some from representatives of the British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association. Like Professor McColl, I have found them to be long-suffering, self-effacing, good people, not wanting to make a fuss. But many of those amputees have endured a service for years that has supplied them with ill-fitting limbs—limbs the basic design of which has not altered for over 50 years, limbs that break down and disappear for weeks while they go away for repairs. They are denied access to the far more modern and aesthetically attractive artificial limbs available abroad, principally in Germany, Japan and the United States, while British manufacturers, especially Hanger and Vessa, through their tight monopoly, prevent new entrants from coming into the industry and have done little, if anything, to improve their own products, at any rate until now.
The motion effectively says that the Labour party wishes that situation to continue. The party which claims a monopoly of care in fact cares only about the few hundred jobs which for years have benefited from a most unfair monopoly and about the preservation of restrictive working practices which directly result in discomfort, delay and despair among 63,000 severely disabled people. Not infrequently, amputees have to undergo further operations because of the inadequacies of their appliances. Unfortunately, the Labour party has a vested interest in delay, discomfort and despair because those conditions provide their only firm recruiting ground. Such modern-day Socialism is a despicable philosophy which Conservative Members utterly reject. The 63,000 amputees also utterly reject it. Like me, they look forward to the earliest implementation of the McColl recommendations.
We greatly regret the minor interruptions in service to severely disabled people caused by the dispute at J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. which, in the terms of the motion, seems to have the support of the Labour party, and we congratulate the Government and my hon. Friend the Minister on the steps that have been taken to protect amputees from what might otherwise have been most damaging effects.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: I have to declare an interest as parliamentary adviser to the British Lim bless Ex-Service Men's Association for the past 18 years. The majority of the association's members are in my age group. It is, incidentally, an unpaid job. I am also probably the only Member of the House to have given evidence to the McColl inquiry, a task for which I was volunteered by the all-party disablement group. I gave evidence on two occasions. I am very proud of the McColl working party, which was well led and questioned us extremely closely.
On the first occasion the all-party group asked me to give evidence on the limb service. I had access to the submissions made by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation and BLESMA. I also had access to civilian amputees. On that occasion, my brief was prepared by Mary Holland, researcher for MENCAP and


an upper limb amputee. We were well received by Professor McColl and his well-informed associates and he probed the matter in great depth.
On the second occasion, again volunteered by the all-party group, I was asked to give evidence about wheelchairs, as cases had been brought to us by women from the north-east. On that occasion, my brief was prepared by Fidelity Simpson, secretary of the all-party disablement group, who also joined me, and I had a second opportunity to appreciate how thoroughly the working group operated.
Having said that, I should make it clear that people were worried about the amount of money being spent on the limb service and the kind of service being provided to both upper and lower limb amputees as well as to users of cosmetic arms and glass eyes. There was so much concern that I am baffled as to why the companies do not admit that there were so many complaints. At Easter, the Minister will be invited to the BLESMA annual conference, at which, as I know from 18 years' experience, a whole range of motions will be discussed and resolutions drafted, copies of which will be sent to the Department, to receive, in the fulness of time, a reply from the Minister. So people cannot pretend that they did not know that there were problems with the limb service.
My next comment will upset some hon. Members. I believe that the Minister is being used as a fall guy. I believe that he is being pressured by Hanger through the work force. This incident has not just begun. It had been building up for a long time. It can easily be pinpointed at the time when Professor McColl was asked to form his working party, which was well before the last general election, and the invitation was sent out by one of the Minister's predecessors. So there had been concern about this for a long time.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Whitfield) pinpointed some of the problems and read eloquently from the McColl report, but his speech became rather weak when he departed from the text to try to make party political points. He should have stuck to the script because McColl has lessons for us all. No one is innocent in this. The Minister mentioned new developments in upper limb prosthesis. As long ago as 1977, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) brought the myoelectric arm from Sweden to be tried out in this country, so let us not have any party political accusations about this. There is a major problem relating to upper and lower limb prostheses. There have been changes in structure and materials.
The BLESMA group, who are my age, may be dying out—there have not been many new war amputees—but the number of civil amputees has grown. The prosthetists' job is also made more difficult as the population grows older and they have the problem of fitting limbs to stumps for people suffering from age-related cardiovascular diseases. There is thus a massive problem to be faced.
The structure set up by the Minister's predecessor—a friend of mine, although he is a Tory—in my view thwarted the proper implementation of the McColl proposals. To put it kindly to the present Minister, I think that it will be extremely difficult to marry the McColl concept of an independent management committee reporting to the Minister, which I thought was a good structure, into a committee of civil servants which has been

set up within the Department to report to the Minister. No doubt some of those civil servants are present today. They may be very genuine and just the right kind of people, but one cannot marry the major concept of McColl into that structure. The Minister may have to come up with a compromise, but it will be difficult because it looks as though the main McColl recommendation was sabotaged when that committee of civil servants was established. I do not know how he will overcome that. It will be a major problem for him as it would provide some independence.
I can understand why skilled limb fitters worry about their future. J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. should not have gone down the path that it pursued, because it has so many inconsistencies. I believe that the company is trying to get at the Minister and his Department and McColl through the work force. I believe that honestly and sincerely.
I am an old hand. I shall say something to the Minister that I shall not be saying after the next election, so he need not worry about that. Whatever the Minister does in future on this matter, for God's sake will he consult the amputees, who could give him much advice? That was writ large into McColl. Tiny Bunch, Duke Hussey and Liz Fanshaw from the Disabled Living Foundation served on the McColl committee. They are disabled. One is a double lower limb amputee and the other is a wheelchair bound, experienced occupational therapist. Those people could give the Minister positive help and advice. Who better to give the House advice on the problems of the deaf than my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley)? Who knows more about the problems of stump difficulties? It has been said that one recommendation made by the experienced people on the McColl committee was that consideration should always be given to the nature, shape and size of the stump because that must bear the limb. When surgeons amputate, it is final. If a surgeon fouls that up in the first instance, he has fouled up the life of the individual who has lost a limb.
All those matters are before the Minister. Through no fault of his own, he is faced with an industrial dispute. However, he has a major responsibility. He is the "target for tonight" from outside the House. He should go to J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. and say, "Do not take it out on the employees because you are dissatisfied with me or because you are dissatisfied with McColl. We have tried to produce a contract for you". That is possibly ultimately a subject of litigation. The possibility is there all the time. In that respect, the Minister has my deepest sympathy.
The Minister has a clear bounden duty, possibly with the Minister of State, Home Office—the constituency Member who is statute-barred from speaking tonight—to go to J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. together and say, "Enough of this messing. You should not have called in ACAS on this matter. You know the difficulties that you are creating for people in need."
The Minister can take care of himself. It is not so easy for a person who has lost a limb or two limbs. We should not be taking it out on them. Will the Minister please take my advice and ask for a return match with the managing director of J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. and say, "Enough of this nonsense. Get back to the original position. Do not make people suffer because of your problems and the fact that you have a dispute with my Department." I hope that the Minister will resolve the problem by that method. I am sure that it can be done and that many more people will be happy and satisfied.

Mr. Lewis Stevens: The hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) pointed us towards an interesting possibility as to why the dispute at J. E. Hanger and Co. Ltd. came about. What is certain from what the hon. Gentleman said is that the problem did not arise suddenly. Behind it was something that had been going on for some time. That is typical of confrontations that result from problems that appear to have arisen from a relatively short discussion period, but have been dragging on for some considerable time. It is no compliment to the work force or the management that we have reached this position. As the Minister rightly said, the patient is all-important in such circumstances, and an early resolution of the problem is imperative.
It is wrong for the Opposition and the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) to put it all down to a one-sided approach and to suggest that it was a simple matter and that everything had been done badly by management during the latter period. As the hon. Member for Eccles said, the McColl report was behind what happened, although it did not intend to create the problem.
The report accepted that many of the people involved in providing a service to the limbless and to others have the right motivation and intend to do good, but it queried strongly the effectiveness and suitability of those services. That should have provoked the response that there was something decidedly wrong. My hon. Friend the Minister said that the report highlighted much that was not good enough about the service and that could be improved. That included the cost of the services. The figures quoted in the McColl report were £38 million being spent on the provision of artificial limbs and £32 million on wheelchairs, and it suggested that as much as £11 million could be saved and used elsewhere. I hope that it would *he used for the benefit of the limbless, but such a reduction in cost would be bound to affect the companies which produce the limbs.
This may have been partly an attempt to frighten the work force, but when significant changes in productivity are wanted, if the matter is not handled well and there is no genuine consultation, all that will happen is this great punch-up, which often results in neither side being prepared to give way, and eventually there are sackings, and so on.
It is to the great credit of my hon. Friend the Minister that he pressurised the management to use ACAS to try to resolve the problem. That is the right way to go. It is not suitable for Governments to start meddling in industrial relations. Some Opposition Members believe that it is a good idea, but almost inevitably it brings the wrong results and little satisfaction to anyone. The Government's policy is not to meddle, and that is right. I hope that the procedure which has been encouraged by the Minister will bring an early resolution of the problem.
I was pleased to hear the Minister say that some computerisation had been introduced. The McColl report also recommended the appointment of a manager. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Eccles that it might be difficult to impose a different structure later, but with care it is possible. I accept that, having done one thing, a second change could be a little more difficult to achieve, but 1 hope that the Minister will seriously consider introducing the management board that was proposed by

McColl. It must also be encouraging for limbless people that the Government and the service have started to consider more widely the supply of limbs to the disabled. McColl made it clear that the provision of limbs and the service given to the limbless were inadequate, so the Government's action in this area is encouraging.
Other matters mentioned in the report have not yet been tackled. They include the upgrading of the professional training of prosthetists, and the combination of surgeons, prosthetists and others in the Department to provide the best service and the rehabilitation of limbless people. We need a more strongly co-ordinated effort. McColl was not satisfied with the apparent fragmentation of some of the help that was being given. The Government have made a start on the placing of contracts. If the service is to become more accessible, the various specialists who are involved must he integrated at some speed.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider closely when the House can receive a full report on the conclusions that have been reached. The report was produced in January, nearly 12 months ago, and I am pleased that there has been some movement it is excellent that things are happening—but it is important that the House should receive at the earliest moment the Government's conclusions and intentions following the McColl report. The report has long-term implications, and it is recognised in the report that some of them will take a long time to work through. That makes it even more urgent that we know about the Government's conclusions in the near future.

Mr. Terry Fields: When the Minister addressed the House he said that he was not taking sides on this issue. Having said that, he and his Back-Bench collegues took the part of the bosses in the Hanger dispute. It will not escape the attention of workers who are listening to the debate, or who read about it, that trade union disputes that are discussed in the House invariably result—it could be said that this result is 100 per cent. assured—in Labour Members standing up for the workers against the bosses while Conservative Members support the bosses.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

Mr. Fields: No; I do not have time.
Conservative Members have introduced a mire of distortion and many contradictions. We know that the .300 employees at the Hanger factory are involved in the fitting of 500 limbs a week and that when overtime was offered to them they refused to work it. It was that which led to the strike. The management is now talking about reducing the work force from 300 to 80. That is ludicrous. Such a proposal does not make sense and lacks all reason.
When we try to ascertain the effect that the strike is having, we find that it is having only a
minimal effect on a small percentage of patients".
We know, however, that the 300 workers were dealing with 500 limbs a week, which means that over 10 weeks they handled 5,000 patients. We know also that the strike has been running for 10 weeks. If we listen to Conservative Members, however, we are given to understand that the strike is having only a "minimal effect". No information on this score is available at the limb centres that I have


contacted. That is not surprising if the Minister has been trotting around trying to keep the lid on the effect that the strike is having on those in need.
It is important to remember that the firm makes bespoke limbs. It goes beyond some firms which make only small, medium and large limbs. We are talking about a firm which makes limbs to fit the needs of particular individuals. Other firms supply stump stockings for ill-fitting limbs, or alternatively patients are sent to Hanger to have their needs met.
Unlike the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris), who has received £5,000 from the bosses, I have been on the Hanger picket line. I met Hanger workers at the Labour party conference and I give total support to them and to any other workers who are involved in industrial disputes against managements of the sort that prevails at Hanger and the backer of Hanger, which is BTR. Morale on the picket line and among the workers generally is extremely high. Despite having been 10 weeks on strike, the pickets have the support of the majority of the work force. As late as 13 October a mandate was given to the union's negotiators to act as observers at ACAS and to bring any decisions back to the work force so that it can decide what is to happen.
Conservative Members have made great play about ACAS, and they should realise that the Hanger management is making a mockery of conciliation in this dispute. Initial offers of redundancy pay of £130 for every year of service have since been forgotten or withdrawn by the management. We can hope only that the representative of J. E. Hanger on the Conservative Benches will be able to influence the management. I hope that he will insist that when discussions take place with ACAS next week the management will have some concrete proposals for the resolution of the dispute.
Since the dispute started, 23 people have left the factory but only six of them have found jobs. That blows sky high the Tory myth that the unemployed in the north-west should come south to look for jobs. There are no jobs, particularly around Roehampton, where workers have been seeking jobs since being kicked out of work. I have spoken to those involved, and they are not the mindless militants that reactionaries in the Tory party like to think. They are just decent workers, who are dedicated to providing a service for the disabled. The average age of those whom I have seen is between 40 and 50, and many of them have given a lifetime of service to the industry.
Hon. Members talk about flexibility in negotiations, but the bosses have already said that no one aged over 50 will be given his job back. Although they have a wealth of experience and have given a lifetime to the industry, those people are being treated like that. Incidentally, two of the workers recently received trade union badges to commemorate 40 years of union membership, and most of that time was spent working in the industry.
Tory Members talk about terrible workers who make too many demands, want restrictive practices, and so on, but they should look behind the scenes and at who is pulling J. E. Hanger's strings. The hon. Member for Leominster is getting £5,000 for it, but the parent company, BTR, should be given even greater scrutiny. It is the key to the whole affair.
In the year ending June 1985, BTR made a profit of £151 million through its investment and involvement in

industry round the world. For the most part, that profit was made by paying poverty wages to South African workers in breach of the EEC code, to which Great Britain is a signatory. It is an absolute scandal that that should be allowed to happen, and that we should have contracts with industries that have such records. The majority of black workers employed by BTR are in receipt of about 385 rand per month, which is eqivalent to about £100 per month. The starting rate for the majority of black workers is 40 per cent. below the South African poverty level, and it only just about keeps them alive. The profits made by that man and by the subsidiary companies should be contrasted with the standards of living experienced by those whom they employ. For example, the salary of the managing director of BTR, Sir Owen Green, increased from £97,000 a year in 1984 to £147,000. His attitude towards industrial relations is well documented. For him, profits reign supreme and his relationship with the personnel is nonexistent. That of course permeates British management. His ideology is to treat British workers similarly.
Prior to the dispute, the unions allowed the introduction of new technology, withdrew demarcation lines, and were seen by the company to be bending over backwards to accommodate management. Of course, that was also seen by the company as a sign of weakness, and there were further attacks on conditions. Perhaps I have a vested interest, as I have a comrade in Liverpool, Cathy Wilson, who is disabled and who has a limb made by Hanger. She fears that the sackings may be part of a rationalisation plan to cut the number of factories in the limb-making business. The McColl report revealed that, although six firms are contracted to the DHSS for artificial limbs, there are in reality only two, and they are both owned by the BTR subsidiary, which is also the main contractor for wheelchairs for the DHSS.
In our motion, we demand that the Government should stop hiding behind Hanger's mangement—which is, of course, BTR—and should accept that they have a responsibility for the patients who so desperately need attention and limbs fitted through the DHSS. Sole responsibility for the dispute lies with Hanger's management. The Tory Government, by their inactivity in an area where they clearly have a locus, are abrogating their responsibilities. The disabled should be made aware of that.
The caring face of the Tory party is betrayed by the fact that, although letters have been written by the striking workers to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie), and to the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), no response to date has been given.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor): Rubbish.

Mr. Fields: If that is rubbish, the Minister, whom I saw being carried around the Strangers' Lobby by Hanger's workers, will no doubt take it up with them. My information, as late as this evening, is that he has refused to reply to letters. If he wants to make anything of it, we shall talk to the workers. I have nothing to hide, even if he has.
To compound the complicity in this affair, since the workers have been sacked, the Government have turned down applications for unemployment benefit and other


social security benefits. The excuse is that the workers are on strike and are not unemployed. All the dismissed workers at J. E. Hanger are in receipt of P45 forms. If that is the case, clearly they come under the provisions of the Act.
In the interim, the workers demand a flexible approach, reinstatement and negotiation. It is a moderate demand, given the high-handed attitude of the management, who want to sack 300 workers and then redeploy 80 of them.
I should go further than the Labour party's motion on the Order Paper. In the long term, the only security for these and other workers, who are only pawns in the profit game being played by the Tory party backers, is for the total takeover of the Health Service and ancillary service industries, under democratic worker control and management, as part of a national plan, to cater for the desperate needs of ordinary people, not the greedy and acquisitive few who exploit workers for the sake of profits in the way they exploited the workers previously employed by J. E. Hanger & Co. Ltd.

Mr. Speaker: It may be for the convenience of the House if I say that I understand that the Opposition Front Bench spokesman will seek to reply at half-past nine.

Mr. Toby Jessel: The loss of a leg, an arm, a foot or a hand is a severe form of disablement and is also a great hardship. It can be a tremendous misfortune and disabled people require the utmost compassion and support from Parliament, the Government and the public. Some of those who have lost limbs have risked their lives so that others may live in freedom and peace. They may have lost limbs in the second world war, in the Falklands, in Northern Ireland, or in other places where secondary wars have taken place. We do not always show enough honour and respect to these people. The French, for example, have special seats on buses for those who were mutilated in time of war. People with other ailments take second priority.
We must show concern to anyone who, through illness, has lost a limb or part of a limb. Often, their employment prospects are damaged. It can be difficult, with missing limbs, to enjoy the enforced leisure that may ensue. It is a tragedy that such people have been caught in the crossfire of this foolish dispute. The work force, in most cases consisting of excellent people, are some of my constituents, because Twickenham is not far from Roehampton.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), whom I see on the Front Bench tonight, also has many constituents among that work force. It is a pity that this matter has become so politicised. I hold no brief for either side. From what I have heard tonight, the management is unimpressive. They have shown poor leadership qualities.
I was glad to hear my hon. Friend the Minister say that he hoped for a swift settlement. He said that there were 62,000 amputee patients in this country and that every week 2,500 or 3,000 appointments are made for limb fitting or repair. At present, 58 patients have not been treated. As there are about 150,000 appointments a year, they represent about one patient in 2,500, but even that is one person in 2,500 too many, and I wish that there were none.
I should like to tell my hon. and learned Friend the Minister about a constituent who needed an artificial leg

replaced and was suffering because the previous one did not fit well. She wrote to me and I telephoned the manager of the Richmond, Twickenham, and Roehampton health authority. Within a matter of days the lady, who is a lecturer at Richmond upon Thames tertiary college, had a new limb supplied. That is consistent with what the Minister said at the beginning of the debate, that if hon. Members get in touch with the health authorities about particular cases of hardship, action will be taken and the hardship dealt with, albeit in difficult circumstances.
This tragic strike is undoubtedly all the more noticeable because these days there are few strikes compared with 10 years ago. I am glad to support the amendment, which is couched in a balanced way, contrasting with the somewhat intemperate language of the motion, which I hope will be defeated.

Mr. Ernie Ross: Earlier in the debate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) pointed out that the real patsy in the dispute was the Government. He said that the antecedents of the strike lay in the McColl report. If I could bring the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State more up to date, on 9 January 1986 the Hanger management made it clear who was to blame and made clear the type of Russian roulette that it was playing both with its work force and with the people to whom it is responsible—those to whom it supplies limbs.
The following notice appeared on the notice board at Hanger, Vessa and Kellie, which is in my constituency:
As you will know, the Companies were threatened with nationalisation at the end of last year and only on the intervention of our local MP, David Mellor, with the Minister, Tony Newton, was this set aside.
Following that, we found that the DHSS would not agree to any price increase for the Companies and refused to conduct business on the basis that we have done for the last 30 years.
Instead, they offered a contract more than halving profit levels, increasing bureaucratic control of 30 per cent. of our orders and imposing swingeing penalties for failure to deliver on time…
This meeting was arranged to apprise you of these facts and to give you"—
that is the work force through its representatives—
90-day notice of redundancies as a consequence of the closure of the Companies.
The notice went on to say that there had been four hours of negotiations in which the Ministers participated. Only then did the Secretary of State intervene and the DHSS pull back.
The notice continued:
The problem is by no means resolved because, in agreeing to this interim arrangement, we have been forced to accept immediate discussions aimed at introducing a commercially-based contract which will mean substantial changes in methods of conducting our business and in the conduct of working practices. In addition to other changes, this will mean output per man must go up and delivery times must come down.
No doubt it is the DHSS's intention to have in place a commercially-based contract.
Then a company notice went up, advising the work force to get its finger out. If the workers have to get their fingers out, the managers can pay for it. Contrast that with the efforts of the work force to supply limbs to those who require them and who, through the negotiating and disciplinary procedures, agreed to pursue the dispute reasonably to a successful conclusion. Clearly, the patsy is the Government.
The Government are absolutely responsible and the Hanger management has made that clear to the work force. It is the Government's decision to change the method of awarding contracts that has led Hanger to take this action against its work force. That has precipitated the strike. It is trying to induce the work force to accept unreasonable terms. Given the record of the work force, it is unreasonable to ask it to accept those terms. The management is suggesting, not only that those terms be accepted in the meantime, but in the future. It is against that background that the debate is taking place tonight.
We need to hear from the Minister that he will tell the company that it cannot be allowed to use the work force to settle the dispute. The dispute is between the Government and J. E. Hanger. The Government have a responsibility. The Minister knows that if the company decided to pull out or cease trading, the contracts awarded historically
contained a clause which gave the Department the right, under certain conditions, to take over the Company at an agreed evaluation.
There can be no doubt that the Government have an overriding responsibility to those who require the limbs and to the dedicated work force to intervene and ensure that J. E. Hanger starts negotiating with the people concerned, who for the past few years have been providing a very good service to patients.

Mr. Alfred Morris: No industrial dispute can be judged as to its importance by the number of people directly involved; there are also the tests of the principle or principles at stake and the effects of the dispute on others. This melancholy, bitter and protracted dispute is about deeply important issues of principle. It is a dispute that affects many thousands of severely disabled people. They include young mothers, anxious parents of disabled children and, among others, people with severe war disabilities. The work people at Roehampton, whose skills have helped them, have a prescriptive right to the attention of the House, and it is much to the credit of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that it was he, not the Government, who provided the parliamentary time to debate the dispute.
There have been many notable contributions to the debate, not least those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones). As the House knows, both are tireless friends of disabled people and all who work to help them. Other Members speaking from this side of the House informed the debate with speeches that wholly vindicated the parliamentary time that we have provided. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) fully documented our concern about the dispute when he opened the debate. He pressed the Minister to act purposefully to help bring the dispute to an end on terms that will meet the legitimate claims of the work people involved, many of whom are themselves disabled. Their devoted service to amputees has so very often, in my experience, gone far beyond the calls of duty.
A ballot of the work force at Roehampton endorsed with virtual unanimity the call for reinstatement of all—I stress all—who have lost their livelihood. The case put

by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras was well argued and compelling. Anyone who thinks otherwise should reflect on the statement of the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), who described the lock-out of the 300 workers in his constituency as
a gross over-reaction to a minor dispute.
The hon. Gentleman is, of course, not only the hon. Member for Putney but a Minister.
If the Minister responsible for the disabled feels that he has no direct role in ending the dispute, what contact has he had with his right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Employment about trying to have it resolved? What steps, if any, did he or his right hon. and noble Friend take to bring the parties together? The impression of many of us is that Employment Ministers are too busy trying to massage the employment statistics to help resolve disputes of this kind. They have now performed the trick 18 times. In fact, nowadays, Whitehall seems to have been turned into one huge statistical massage parlour. We now know that people who work with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing street can be "economical with the truth." Many Whitehall watchers are convinced that the masseurs at the Department of Employment and the DHSS are becoming not just economical but even parsimonious, at least with statistical truth.
For the purposes of this debate, however, my concern is to emphasise that DHSS Ministers could and should have found time to do much more to end this dispute. What is incontrovertible is that if, when we were in power and I was the Minister, there had been a dispute of this length affecting the special interest and well-being of severely disabled people, Conservative Members would have been up in arms and screaming with charges of ministerial indifference, inactivity and incompetence.
Baroness Trumpington said in the other place many weeks ago that the dispute is a matter for the company and its employees and that it would be inappropriate for Her Majesty's Government to intervene. She went on to say:
My Lords, our main responsibility is to make sure that the effects of the dispute at Hanger's Roehampton factory on the service to patients in the country as a whole is minimal with a relatively small number of appointments being cancelled. We do not envisage any amputee being left immobile as a result of the J. E. Hanger dispute."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 October 1986; Vol. 480, c. 1024.]
Within days of that statement, the DHSS press office was acknowledging that more than 50 severely disabled people had already been left immobile as a result of the dispute. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House with knowledge of cases of extreme hardship in their constituencies would have regarded that as a conservative estimate.
The House has heard, among others, of the distressing case of a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras who was found unconscious after extensive bleeding from his stump and extreme discomfort. Ought we not now be told just how many people, at the latest date for which figures are available, have been made immobile as a result of the dispute?
The Minister for the Disabled has tonight taken much the same stance as his noble Friend in regard to the Government's responsibilities and priorities in their approach to the dispute at J. E. Hanger. I must, therefore, very strongly stress that any case of an appointment being cancelled is a serious matter for the disabled person left


waiting for help. To talk about "a relatively small number" of appointments being cancelled, as the Government have done, can mask unmerited suffering on a disturbing scale.
On 27 October I raised with the Minister, at the request of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, the case of a disabled young mother who had visited an artificial limb and appliance centre no fewer than 23 times without her problem being solved. She had damaged her artificial leg after falling in a shopping centre while carrying her baby son earlier this year and wrote to RADAR on 23 October. I was authorised to pass on her letter of complaint to the Minister, and, in pressing him to give it his immediate attention, I asked on 27 October when and how the Government would act to resolve the case. From that day to this I have had no response. It is for that reason that I baulk when I read that the Government's main concern is with service to patients.
Again, take the case of 22-month old Kris Aston of Plymouth who was born with no legs and the use of only one arm. He can only walk with artificial legs. I quote from the Western Morning News after a visit by Kris and his parents to Roehampton. It says:
Kris is already outgrowing his present set of legs, but the company which makes them has just shut down and sacked its 300-strong work force. His mother has been told that Kris may not be able to have a new pair of legs.
Without them Kris will be totally immobile. He has already been forced to cut down on the number of hours he spends wearing his present set of legs each day because they are causing him pain… He cries every time we try to put on the old legs, but nobody seems to care.
That is another of the many cases that are causing deep concern. It is one that affects a grievously disabled child in pain and calls very much into question the Government's claim that service to patients is their paramount concern.
When he replies, I hope that the Minister will tell us how many of the disabled people affected by the dispute are being allocated to other centres for the provision of limbs. Will he also inform the House how the waiting lists have been affected by the dispute? Will he give the numbers of people waiting for artificial limbs, one year ago and six months ago, and the length of the waiting lists at both the Hanger factory in Roehampton and at Blatchfords in Northern Ireland?
The dispute at Roehampton cannot be meaningfully considered in isolation from the McColl report and, more particularly, from the Government's piecemeal approach to its recommendations. The importance of the recommendations to the dispute was readily conceded in the House of Lords on 17 October and the Government's inordinate delay in making a definitive statement about them is highly culpable. In one parliamentary question after another I and other right hon. and hon. Members have pressed for a full and definitive response from the Government. That is much more than we have had from the Minister for the Disabled in this debate.
In a written answer on 17 June, the former Minister for the Disabled, the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton), said that he hoped to announce the Government's decisions on the report before the summer recess. That announcement was not made, and even now, in late November, we are still awaiting a definitive statement a year after the McColl report was presented to Ministers.
The McColl report was published in January 1986, yet there is still no public indication of how the Government

will respond to many of its most important recommendations. That has created both anguish and uncertainty among the organisations of and for disabled people, among the companies involved in the production of artificial limbs and their workers, among the approved repairers and, most importantly, among disabled people themselves. They were and are entitled to much more consideration from the Government.
The Minister should now tell us to what extent his Department's contracts with Hanger—unreported in the House—were themselves a factor in provoking the dispute. The Wandsworth Borough News on 21 September reported:
Dr. Hiddleston"—
the managing director of Hangers—
claimed unions at Roehampton had been kept 'fully informed' of the new DHSS requirements but 'attempts to change Roehampton to meet the new situation were unsuccessful'.
The Minister owes it to the House to spell out the "new requirements" and to say to what extent they were a factor in causing the dispute. What in detail were the "new requirements" and how do they relate to the McColl report?
Whatever else the Minister might argue about Dr. Hiddleston's statement, he cannot possibly now deny that the DHSS has had a direct role in the dispute and that it was involved from the outset. The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Meadowcroft) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) touched on that important point. We are entitled now to an unambiguous response from the Government.
It is central to our case in the debate that the DHSS, like the Department of Employment, could and should have done much more to end the dispute. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), who is with me on the Opposition Front Bench tonight, in a speech at Roehampton on 30 October, charted the way to the settlement of a dispute which is damaging both to a work force which has given front-line service in patient care over many years and to the disabled people whom it serves. The work people merit much more consideration than they have received so far and deserve well of this House as a whole.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Nicholas Lyell): We are debating an industrial dispute which, albeit to a small extent, is affecting patients and which ought to be resolved. The debate is timely for several reasons and it has covered several important aspects. Those aspects are, first, the crucial matter of maintaining services to the patients; secondly, the need for the company and the trade unions who represent the work force to get together to resolve their difficulties, using the good offices of ACAS; and, thirdly, the wider issue of the future of the artificial limb and appliance centres and the service to patients as a whole, including the wheelchair service.
Despite the somewhat choppy tone of the early stages of the debate, there have been valuable contributions from both sides of the House. The need to resolve the dispute, which must be one of the first matters of concern, and the need to involve ACAS has been stressed by the hon. Members for Leeds, West (Mr. Meadowcroft) and for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones), who made a most distinguished


speech, and also by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel). Although he was unable to take part in the debate, I think that it will be recognised by the whole House that nobody has played a greater part in seeking to bring this dispute to an end and to resolve it constructively than my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), in whose constituency Roehampton is situated and who has been present in the Chamber throughout the debate.
Emphasis has been placed by a number of hon. Members upon the action that the Department should take to meet the needs of patients during the dispute. They have emphasised the importance of bringing ACAS into the dispute. I was glad and not at all surprised that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) raised the absolutely crucial matter of the future of patient care as his first concern. It is common ground that it should be the concern of us all.
I shall deal in a moment with the way ahead for the service, with the significance of the McColl report and with the action that we are taking. This matter was referred to in particular by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). He made a distinguished and constructive contribution, to which I shall refer in some detail. It was taken up by my hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Mr. Whitfield) and for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) who, in a most constructive contribution on behalf of the company, clearly recognised that the McColl report shows the way ahead.
I return to the matter that concerns us most of all: the way in which the dispute might be affecting patients. I shall try to meet at once the anxieties that were expressed by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe, and I shall also try to correct some of the misunderstandings.
The Government are in no sense complacent. In a dispute of this nature there is always a danger that patients may be adversely affected. We have taken a number of steps to try to avert that danger. It is not correct to suggest that 50 people have been left immobile. I suspect that that might have been a slip of the tongue by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe. It was said at the time that 50 appointments had been postponed.
It is important to emphasise that Mr. Bailer, who works at Gatwick airport and who had a jury rig repair made to two artificial limbs, has been able to remain at work. His concern, rightly but moderately expressed this morning on radio, is that he should have his proper artificial limb repaired, in case anything should happen to the jury rig. That repair is in hand. In fact the repair had been in hand for some time before he spoke on radio. The limb ought to be completely repaired by 5 December and we hope to be able to make an appointment for him on 8 December.
We are taking further specific action concerning a small child, Kris Aston. Despite the difficulties, the case was brought to light and action was taken. New limbs are being manufactured and should be ready next week. The finishing work will be carried out in Exeter and the case will be dealt with at Exeter, mainly to avoid the journey to London which is no fun for a small child or for any disabled person. The family has said that it is very satisfied so far. We take the point about "so far" because our duty is to see that patients are not inconvenienced and are not

made to suffer and that any problems caused by the dispute are kept to an absolute minimum. We have taken a number of steps to seek to protect patients as far as possible from the effects of the dispute. First, our attention has been focused on the vulnerable patients. These are of course Hanger's patients whose care is based on its Roehampton premises or whose limbs must come directly or indirectly from Roehampton. I should like to indicate the scale of the problem, in part to keep it in perspective, and to reiterate what we are doing.
On the matter of scale, it is important to stress that of our 53,000 lower limb patients—and we are talking here entirely about lower limb patients—29,000 are J.E. Hanger patients. The 9,000 upper limb patients are wholly supplied with those limbs by Hugh Steeper Limited, a quite separate firm. The great majority of them look not to Roehampton, but to the 18 ALACs and nine satellite centres countrywide. It is on the 3,000 patients who look to Hanger at Roehampton that our attention is focused. Of these—and every case had been checked—315 appear to have been affected in some way by the dispute and of those 315 we have identified 116 priority cases, including 13 children. Every case has been looked at with great care. The process is one of identifying potential problems and taking action to overcome those problems.
Without in any way implying complacency, I can say that so far we have managed to succeed in keeping people mobile or in keeping problems to a minimum. We have received fewer than 10 complaints and on each of them action has been taken. I must repeat, and I hope that it will go far and wide, that any patient listening to this debate or any patient who has been in touch with any hon. Member because he is experiencing difficulty should get in touch at once with his nearest ALAC or with the Department of Health and Social Security and he will be attended to at the earliest possible date.
I should stress two points. First, we have instructed all 19 ALACs to maintain contact with local Hanger staff on a continual basis. This procedure was established very early in the dispute and it has been extended where necessary. Additionally, we have been examining all outstanding files to try to tell whether an individual patient may be in trouble. For example, a patient may have visited his or her ALAC many weeks ago but has not returned to the centre despite an expected further visit; or a patient with a specific order for a limb may still be waiting with the limb overdue.
It will be recognised that the ALAC service is essentially reactive. It is part of its pride that there are no waiting lists. As far as possible, it provides an on-demand service for repairs and fittings. It has about 150,000 contacts a year with its 62,000 patients. That is 3,000 contacts a week, and of these a high proportion of problems, whether for repair or replacement or for some fitting attention, will be resolved immediately. Because the service is reactive, we must rely on patients to tell us if they are in difficulty, and that is why I repeat what my hon. Friend the Minister has said, that if anyone is in trouble as a result of the dispute or for any other reason or is known to be in trouble he or someone else should contact his nearest ALAC or the Department.
Before I discuss the need for the company and the work force to get together to resolve their dispute, I want to answer the specific points that were put to me by the right


hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. These specific points will, I think, be of interest to the whole House, as is the concern for patients.
The right hon. Gentleman asked what pressure the general manager was putting on Hangers. The simple answer is that he is pressing Hangers to talk to the unions through ACAS to resolve the dispute and—to be fair, we have received a response to the request—to minimise the disruption to patients. The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the role of the NHS management board. The role of the general manager is to report not to implement but to anticipate—on some of the views of McColl and the benefit of management expertise that that will help to bring to bear.
He also asked why Hangers and Vessa were suing the Government. The answer seems to be because the Government are seeking, as McColl recommended, to improve the contractual position in order to get a better service for patients. Of course we regret that, but we do not intend to be deflected. Nevertheless, that seems to be the reason.
I, like other hon. Members, was encouraged to hear the constructive remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster. I hope that we shall see a change of heart and movement across a broad front with the assistance of the company.
I acknowledge the tribute of the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South to Professor McColl and his working party and the support given to it by the all-party disablement group. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for recognising that these issues are complex. I emphasise that in no sense are we seeking to make changes to implement cuts. In fact, far from there being cuts, our intention is to use all the resources better, against a background of help for the long-term sick and disabled which is now £1·9 billion higher than when the Labour Government had control of these matters. That £1·9 billion, with £400 million in real rises in the value of individual benefits, is a significant sum that ought to be of interest to the whole House. It is, rightly, a matter of pride to the Government in their help for the long-term sick and disabled.
Having answered the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, and having welcomed his constructive support for McColl, I now turn to the duty to look to the future and the Government's approach. Following the recommendations of the McColl working party, which this Government set up—tributes have been properly paid to my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) who anticipated it—we have done a number of things. Despite the fact that the company may not like it, we are pressing for separate contracts for the provision of limbs and appliances and for the provision of prosthetic services. These provide an opportunity for wider competition.
We wish to see a less privileged and protected position for any individual supplier, major or minor. It is fair to say that there is much that is good in the equipment of our existing suppliers, but let them retain their pre-eminence by their ability to compete rather than by a form of annual contract which chokes competition from others. We wish to see an improvement in the quality of prosthetic services. A key aspect—here I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eccles arid all the work that BLESMA is doing and which the hon. Gentleman so ably represents—is better training for prosthetists. We have initiated discussions with their training body and the industry about this. Our

contract proposals will also make it possible for prosthetic firms or independent self-employed prosthetists to work at centres.
In summary, we have dealt with three aspects, but our primary concern is care of patients. The care of patients is——

Mr. James Hamilton: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 167, Noes 246.

Division No. 10]
[10.00 pm


AYES


Abse, Leo
Foulkes, George


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Fraser, J. (Norwood)


Anderson, Donald
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Garrett, W. E.


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Godman, Dr Norman


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Golding, Mrs Llin


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Gould, Bryan


Barnett, Guy
Gourlay, Harry


Barron, Kevin
Hamilton, James (M'well N)


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Hardy, Peter


Blair, Anthony
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith


Boyes, Roland
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Healey, Rt Hon Denis


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Heffer, Eric S.


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Home Robertson, John


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Howarth, George (Knowsley, N)


Buchan, Norman
Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Campbell, Ian
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Canavan, Dennis
Janner, Hon Greville


Carter-Jones, Lewis
John, Brynmor


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Clarke, Thomas
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Clay, Robert
Lambie, David


Clelland, David Gordon
Lamond, James


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Leadbitter, Ted


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)
Leighton, Ronald


Cohen, Harry
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Coleman, Donald
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Litherland, Robert


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Corbett, Robin
Loyden, Edward


Corbyn, Jeremy
McCartney, Hugh


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Craigen, J. M.
McGuire, Michael


Cunliffe, Lawrence
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Dalyell, Tam
McKelvey, William


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
McNamara, Kevin


Deakins, Eric
McTaggart, Robert


Dewar, Donald
McWilliam, John


Dobson, Frank
Madden, Max


Dormand, Jack
Marek, Dr John


Dubs, Alfred
Martin, Michael


Duffy, A. E. P.
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Maxton, John


Eastham, Ken
Maynard, Miss Joan


Fatchett, Derek
Meacher, Michael


Faulds, Andrew
Michie, William


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Mikardo, Ian


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce


Fisher, Mark
Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)


Flannery, Martin
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Forrester, John
Nellist, David


Foster, Derek
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon






O'Brien, William
Skinner, Dennis


Park, George
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Parry, Robert
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'ds E)


Patchett, Terry
Soley, Clive


Pavitt, Laurie
Spearing, Nigel


Pendry, Tom
Stott, Roger


Pike, Peter
Straw, Jack


Radice, Giles
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Randall, Stuart
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Raynsford, Nick
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Redmond, Martin
Tinn, James


Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Richardson, Ms Jo
Wareing, Robert


Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)
Weetch, Ken


Robertson, George
Welsh, Michael


Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
White, James


Rogers, Allan
Wigley, Dafydd


Rooker, J. W.
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)
Winnick, David


Sedgemore, Brian
Woodall, Alec


Sheerman, Barry
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Sheldon, Rt Hon R.



Shore, Rt Hon Peter
Tellers for the Ayes:


Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)
Mr. Don Dixon and


Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)
Mr. Ray Powell.


Silkin, Rt Hon J.



NOES


Adley, Robert
Cormack, Patrick


Aitken, Jonathan
Corrie, John


Alexander, Richard
Cranborne, Viscount


Amess, David
Critchley, Julian


Ancram, Michael
Crouch, David


Arnold, Tom
Dickens, Geoffrey


Ashby, David
Dicks, Terry


Aspinwall, Jack
Dorrell, Stephen


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Dunn, Robert


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Dykes, Hugh


Batiste, Spencer
Emery, Sir Peter


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Evennett, David


Bellingham, Henry
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Bendall, Vivian
Fallon, Michael


Benyon, William
Farr, Sir John


Best, Keith
Favell, Anthony


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Fletcher, Alexander


Blackburn, John
Fookes, Miss Janet


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Forman, Nigel


Body, Sir Richard
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Bottomley, Peter
Forth, Eric


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Freeman, Roger


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Gale, Roger


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)


Bright, Graham
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Brinton, Tim
Glyn, Dr Alan


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Gow, Ian


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Gower, Sir Raymond


Browne, John
Grant, Sir Anthony


Bruinvels, Peter
Greenway, Harry


Buck, Sir Antony
Gregory, Conal


Budgen, Nick
Griffiths, Sir Eldon


Bulmer, Esmond
Grist, Ian


Burt, Alistair
Grylls, Michael


Butcher, John
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Butterfill, John
Harris, David


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Hayes, J.


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Heddle, John


Cash, William
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Chapman, Sydney
Hickmet, Richard


Chope, Christopher
Hicks, Robert


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Hirst, Michael


Cockeram, Eric
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Colvin, Michael
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Conway, Derek
Holt, Richard


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Coombs, Simon
Hubbard-Miles, Peter





Irving, Charles
Price, Sir David


Jessel, Toby
Proctor, K. Harvey


Jones, Robert (Herts W)
Raffan, Keith


Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Raison, Rt Hon Timothy


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Rathbone, Tim


Kershaw, Sir Anthony
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Knight, Greg (Derby N)
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Knowles, Michael
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Knox, David
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Lang, Ian
Roe, Mrs Marion


Latham, Michael
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Lawrence, Ivan
Rowe, Andrew


Lee, John (Pendle)
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Lightbown, David
Scott, Nicholas


Lilley, Peter
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Lord, Michael
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Lyell, Nicholas
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


McCrindle, Robert
Shersby, Michael


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Sims, Roger


Macfarlane, Neil
Skeet, Sir Trevor


MacGregor, Rt Hon John
Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Maclean, David John
Speller, Tony


McLoughlin, Patrick
Spencer, Derek


McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)
Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)


McQuarrie, Albert
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Madel, David
Squire, Robin


Major, John
Stanbrook, Ivor


Malins, Humfrey
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Malone, Gerald
Steen, Anthony


Maples, John
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Marland, Paul
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Mather, Carol
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Sumberg, David


Mellor, David
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Merchant, Piers
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Temple-Morris, Peter


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Terlezki, Stefan


Miscampbell, Norman
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Mitchell, David (Hants NW)
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Moate, Roger
Thurnham, Peter


Monro, Sir Hector
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Montgomery, Sir Fergus
Tracey, Richard


Morris, M. (N'hampton S)
Trippier, David


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Mudd, David
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Murphy, Christopher
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Neale, Gerrard
Viggers, Peter


Needham, Richard
Waddington, David


Nelson, Anthony
Wall, Sir Patrick


Neubert, Michael
Waller, Gary


Nicholls, Patrick
Walters, Dennis


Norris, Steven
Ward, John


Onslow, Cranley
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Oppenheim, Phillip
Wheeler, John


Osborn, Sir John
Whitfield, John


Page, Sir John (Harrow W)
Whitney, Raymond


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Wilkinson, John


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Patten, J. (Oxf W &amp; Abgdn)
Winterton, Nicholas


Pawsey, James
Wolfson, Mark


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Wood, Timothy


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Pollock, Alexander



Portillo, Michael
Tellers for the Noes:


Powell, William (Corby)
Mr. Tony Durant and


Powley, John
Mr. Francis Maude.


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments):—

The House divided: Ayes 210, Noes 21.

Division No. 11]
[10.12 pm


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Glyn, Dr Alan


Amess, David
Gow, Ian


Ancram, Michael
Gower, Sir Raymond


Arnold, Tom
Grant, Sir Anthony


Ashby, David
Greenway, Harry


Aspinwall, Jack
Gregory, Conal


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Griffiths, Sir Eldon


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Grist, Ian


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Grylls, Michael


Batiste, Spencer
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Bellingham, Henry
Harris, David


Bendall, Vivian
Hayes, J.


Benyon, William
Heddle, John


Best, Keith
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Hickmet, Richard


Blackburn, John
Hicks, Robert


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Body, Sir Richard
Hirst, Michael


Bottomley, Peter
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Holt, Richard


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Jessel, Toby


Bright, Graham
Jones, Robert (Herts W)


Brinton, Tim
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Knight, Greg (Derby N)


Bruinvels, Peter
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Buck, Sir Antony
Knowles, Michael


Budgen, Nick
Knox, David


Burt, Alistair
Lang, Ian


Butterfill, John
Latham, Michael


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Lawrence, Ivan


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Lee, John (Pendle)


Cash, William
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Chapman, Sydney
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Chope, Christopher
Lilley, Peter


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Lord, Michael


Cockeram, Eric
Lyell, Nicholas


Colvin, Michael
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Conway, Derek
Macfarlane, Neil


Coombs, Simon
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Cormack, Patrick
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Corrie, John
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Crouch, David
Maclean, David John


Dickens, Geoffrey
McLoughlin, Patrick


Dicks, Terry
McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)


Dorrell, Stephen
McQuarrie, Albert


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Madel, David


Dunn, Robert
Major, John


Durant, Tony
Malins, Humfrey


Emery, Sir Peter
Malone, Gerald


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Maples, John


Fallon, Michael
Marland, Paul


Favell, Anthony
Mather, Carol


Forman, Nigel
Maude, Hon Francis


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Mellor, David


Forth, Eric
Merchant, Piers


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Freeman, Roger
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Gale, Roger
Miscampbell, Norman





Mitchell, David (Hants NW)
Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)


Moate, Roger
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Monro, Sir Hector
Spencer, Derek


Montgomery, Sir Fergus
Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)


Morris, M. (N'hampton S)
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Murphy, Christopher
Squire, Robin


Neale, Gerrard
Stanbrook, Ivor


Needham, Richard
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Nelson, Anthony
Steen, Anthony


Neubert, Michael
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Nicholls, Patrick
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Norris, Steven
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Oppenheim, Phillip
Sumberg, David


Osborn, Sir John
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Page, Sir John (Harrow W)
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Temple-Morris, Peter


Patten, J. (Oxf W &amp; Abgdn)
Terlezki, Stefan


Pawsey, James
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Thurnham, Peter


Pollock, Alexander
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Powley, John
Tracey, Richard


Price, Sir David
Trippier, David


Proctor, K. Harvey
Twinn, Dr Ian


Raffan, Keith
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Viggers, Peter


Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Waddington, David


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Waller, Gary


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Ward, John


Roe, Mrs Marion
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Wheeler, John


Rowe, Andrew
Whitfield, John


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Whitney, Raymond


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Winterton, Nicholas


Scott, Nicholas
Wolfson, Mark


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Wood, Timothy


Shelton, William (Streatham)
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)



Shersby, Michael
Tellers for the Ayes:


Sims, Roger
Mr. David Lightbown and


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Mr. Michael Portillo.


NOES


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Pike, Peter


Beith, A. J.
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Bruce, Malcolm
Skinner, Dennis


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Steel, Rt Hon David


Freud, Clement
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hancock, Michael
Wainwright, R.


Howells, Geraint
Wallace, James


Kirkwood, Archy
Wigley, Dafydd


Livsey, Richard



Madden, Max
Tellers for the Noes:


Maynard, Miss Joan
Mr. David Alton and


Mikardo, Ian
Mr. Michael Meadowcroft.


Nellist, David

Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House regrets the interruption of service to severely disabled people caused by the dispute at J. E. Hanger &amp; Co. Ltd.; urges the management and workforce to resolve this dispute without delay; notes with approval the Government's initiatives to minimise inconvenience to patients; and congratulates the Government on the action it is taking to secure long term improvements in the standards of artificial limb services.

Terrorism

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor): I beg to move,
That the draft Suppression of Terrorism 1978 (Application of Provisions) (United States of America) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 20th November, be approved.
As the House will be aware, the purpose of the order is to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the supplementary extradition treaty with the United States. The text of the supplementary treaty, as amended, is set out in schedule 1 to the draft order. Its principal effect will be to prevent those accused or convicted of certain serious crimes of violence from avoiding extradition by claiming that their offences are political. The background to the supplementary treaty is, of course, events in Northern Ireland, and the fact that people accused of serious crime associated with the situation there have fled to the United States to seek haven and have been able to avoid extradition.
The present extradition treaty with the United States will remain in effect in conjunction with the supplementary treaty. The treaty sets out in the normal way a list of crimes for which extradition may take place. This is a requirement of our Extradition Act 1870. The treaty incorporates a further requirement of that Act, which is the political offence exception. This requirement is a standard feature of extradition treaties. Thus, the United States treaty prevents extradition
if the offence for which extradition is requested is regarded by the requested party as one of a political character.
This concept is not defined in either the 1870 Act or in the treaty. In the United States a body of case law has arisen concerning the interpretation of this exception. The effect of this has been that the United Kingdom has failed to extradite people accused or even convicted of serious offences on the ground that the United States court had to accept that their political motives prevented extradition.
I believe that all civilised people regard this situation as intolerable. It is deeply offensive to any law-abiding person to see people accused of vicious offences find haven in another country, especially one with which we have such close and friendly relations. It was clear both to the United States Administration and to the United Kingdom that what we had seen was not a proper use of the political offence exception.
The proper purpose of this safeguard must surely relate to asylum. It is to cover the situation in which the requesting state is after the fugitive for reasons other than the enforcement of the ordinary criminal law. This position does not and cannot arise between two liberal democracies, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. In our two countries a person may be sought only in relation to criminal conduct. The courts and the prosecution authorities do not act on the whim of Government, and the Government stand apart from the case. In our country the fugitive, when returned, is tried in the ordinary way according to rigorous standards of justice.
Both Governments considered that it was invidious for terrorist fugitives to escape jurisdiction and to have their conduct dignified by the word "political". In a democracy, the gun and the bomb are the tools of the crook, the thug

and the enemy of law-abiding society. They cannot in any circumstances be regarded as the tools of political activity. Neither is it legitimate to draw a distinction between what goes on in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The assertions by lobbyists in the United States about standards of justice and democracy in Northern Ireland have little or no relationship to reality, and no one knows that better than my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, who I am glad to see in his place this evening. The truth is that the character and courage shown by the people of Northern Ireland has meant that democracy and justice have survived the onslaught of terrorist horror, and will continue to do so.
The draft order before the House is intended to deliver our side of the bargain. The supplementary treaty, like any extradition arrangement, is reciprocal. The draft order, therefore, applies to extradition requests made by the United States to the United Kingdom. As I have indicated, the draft order delivers, in effect, the United Kingdom's side of the treaty. Before ratification can take place, it is necessary for our statutory provisions to be applied in respect of the supplementary treaty. The House is asked, therefore, to approve the draft order, the effect of which will be to apply to the United States certain provisions of the Suppression of Terrorism Act 1978. That Act was the means by which the United Kingdom ratified the European convention on the supression of terrorism. The Act is applied by order to other states which have ratified that convention. It has been applied over the years to all the European countries which have ratified the convention.
The United States is the first country outside the Council of Europe to be designated. The draft order, in schedule 2, identifies the various provisions in the 1978 Act which give effect to the provisions of the supplementary treaty which is before us. In particular, paragraph 5 of schedule 2 sets out the list of offences which are not to be regarded as offences of a political character in relation to a request for the extradition of a person to the United States. This is not the only order which must be made before the supplementary treaty may be ratified. An Order in Council has been made which applies the Extradition Act 1870. A further negative resolution order under the Suppression of Terrorism Act will be laid, the effect of which will be to apply these arrangements to the dependencies.
I hope that the House will agree that the supplementary treaty is a most welcome development. It will send a clear message to terrorists: that neither the United Kingdom nor the United States will provide a haven for those who use violence to further their political ambitions. On that basis, I commend this draft order to the House.

Mr. Clive Soley: It is right that the House should respond to the threat of terrorism that has grown in the last couple of decades, particularly in view of the easier transport around the world, which enables terrorist activity to be carried out at short notice and in different parts of the globe. It is also important that we recognise that there is an underlying cause to terrorism, whether it is in the middle east or Northern Ireland. We have to face those political problems and sooner or later we have to resolve them. We must recognise and have a


concern for the underlying basic rights—the democratic and judicial rights which, over the years, liberal democracies have defended.
It is also right that we should be aware of the danger of what has been called victors' justice—the idea that a person should he returned to a state in order to face the victorious people of the time. We must bear in mind that the United Kingdom has an impressive history on this. In the last century we gave succour to people who may now be described as terrorists. They certainly were terrorists at the time. They included Garibaldi, French aristocrats, and, following that, some of those who escaped from Napoleon, Mr. Bolivar, who escaped from Venezuela and Spanish justice, and many others.
I read article 1(d) as perhaps excluding certain offences which do not involve a direct risk to life, but might involve the use of explosives. The article refers to bombs, grenades, rockets, firearms, and so on, and says:
if this use endangers any person".
What is the situation if the person who has fled to the United States, or elsewhere for that matter, has blown up an electricity pylon, perhaps in an isolated spot and perhaps with no arguable immediate risk to life? Will we be able to apply to the United States for that person's extradition or does this article apply only to loss of life or threat to life?

Mr. Mellor: This is a supplementary treaty. Certain offences are being put into the supplementary treaty. They are already in the original treaty. It is said within that supplementary treaty that they shall not be subject to the political exception. All other offences that are common criminal offences between the United Kingdom and the United States, such as the offence that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, will continue to be covered by the existing treaty. It was our wish that all offences involving the application of bombs and similar terrorist equipment should be covered within the supplementary treaty. Alas, that wish did not survive the proper scrutiny which, under the American constitution, it was given by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That is why the article is as it is.

Mr. Soley: I am grateful for that explanation. I shall have to look again at the original treaty. Perhaps the House will refer to it again on another occasion.
It may be useful if I explore some of the other thoughts mentioned by a number of us who have discussed this matter. I recognise the force of the argument about victors' justice and the importance of the sections in the earlier Acts. I also hear in mind some of the recent debates about race, religion, nationality or political opinion being exclusions for a treaty of this type. I have always had some anxiety about the use of the definition of "political". All offences are political, inasmuch as laws are made and enforced by the state. Taken to its logical conclusion, the anarchist will say, "All these laws are imposed on me as I am in a minority. They are political laws and I do not wish to to respond to them."
I have come across some specific cases. A young black, who had been subjected to several attacks to which the police had not responded immediately, was charged with carrying an offensive weapon. He said, "Well, what else can I do to defend myself?" In a way he was making a political statement, although he was not arguing that it was one. Then there is the rather devious, opportunistic behaviour, often of middle class young people, who, after

being caught shoplifting, claim that all property is theft, therefore their action is political. Usually such people end up in the Conservative party or in business. They make good managers because they are so good at changing the argument as they go along.
That alerted me to the danger of having actions defined as political for extradition or imprisonment. I took a strong line against political status for people in Northern Ireland and elsewhere precisely because of that definition. If one states that a person who has been locked up should be treated differently, one must ask why. Whether the treatment is better or worse makes no difference.
Under the Geneva convention an exception is made for acts of war. That makes a real difference, but political effects as such can be defined in any country. The Soviet Union would argue that it has no political offences, simply criminal offences, and it would define them in its way. We would say that we had no political offences and define them in our way.
Many of those in Northern Ireland prisons are there because of their political belief, which has led them to carry out certain actions which we, rightly define as criminal, but both Unionists and Republicans believe strongly that they committed those acts for political reasons. A reason why I was strongly opposed to political status was that people in breach of the law should not be treated differently in prison.
In recent years I have looked at possible alternatives, and tonight I want only to float them as such. I do not pretend to have an answer to this profoundly difficult problem. First, we should consider the prima facie case being made in an extradition treaty. I am worried that the Secretary of State intends, in certain circumstances, to drop the prima facie rule in the Criminal Justice Bill, which will be debated on Second Reading tomorrow. I cannot think of any good reason for that, especially if one has any doubts about the political clauses in existing treaties.
There is a strong case for saying that the criteria that we use should be a combination of the prima facie case—that is, the country seeking an extradition must make out a case in the criminal law for a person to be extradited; the offence being an offence in the host country where the person is living as well as in the country seeking the extradition; a reasonable expectation of a fair trial; and consideration of whether it would be an unacceptable punishment in the other country. If we decide that the death penalty is unacceptable, for example, I am not sure that we should return a person to face it.
For some time I considered the possibility of arguing the basis of the democratic system. We come under criticism in Northern Ireland about the fair trial, arid 1 shall return to that shortly.

Mr. Mellor: I do not mean to keep interrupting the hon. Gentleman, who is making a most interesting speech, but it may help him if I comment on one of his points. The removal of the prima facie case requirement, which was called for in an editorial in The Guardian, so it is not a narrowly based argument, is in respect of countries which for the most part have civil law systems and find it invidious to bring their procedures, which are different from ours, but not necessarily worse because of that, into line with ours by having a prima facie case. The prima facie case requirement will, of course, remain for those countries covered by the Commonwealth extradition arrangements in the separate Act of Parliament that governs those. The


prima facie case requirement is not invidious there because it relates to a jurisdiction with a common legal background where the prima facie case is commonly understood.
I take no issue with the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised about conditions. That is why we are asserting that the Home Secretary retains a total discretion and will withold his discretion, whatever the courts may have determined about the legal appropriateness, in cases where he has any doubt about the quality of justice. In the past few months we have done that in relation to an African country and would not hesitate to do it again.

Mr. Soley: I am grateful for that explanation. I promise that we shall look at it carefully. I was aware that there were other arguments, but I had not looked at them in detail.
One of the other criticisms is about how democratic the system is. This is an important point. We might well think before returning a person to the Soviet Union or South Africa that the democratic system in those countries does not function in a way that we would consider acceptable. The South African example is sometimes compared, outside and inside the House, to Northern Ireland. It is not comparable to Northern Ireland, for the very good reason that blacks do not have the vote in South Africa, but they do in Northern Ireland.
We know that Sinn Fein at its maximum received 14·8 per cent. of the vote in Northern Ireland, and rose to a maximum of a mere 3 per cent. in the South of Ireland. I am talking about the post-war period. One can see clearly that the people of Ireland, North and South, do not give voting support to Sinn Fein. That is an important part of the argument. One cannot say that about South Africa. There is no way in which black people can measure their opposition to the Government through the democratic process by voting or publishing their own paper. As the Minister of State will know, Sinn Fein publishes a newspaper in Northern Ireland which gets far wider circulation on a weekly basis than any other paper in Northern Ireland. There is a real difference.
Northern Ireland is the problem that has brought this statutory instrument before us tonight. The Government have to face the fact that we are vulnerable overseas on the arguments of the lack of a jury trial, the relaxed rules of evidence required in Northern Ireland, the length of remand in Northern Ireland and the wide powers of arrest. We are also vulnerable on the fact that emergency legislation has been practised in Northern Ireland since 1922. That must signal to the outside world that there is something odd about the way in which Northern Ireland is being governed. That is something that I argued on many occasions when I was a spokesman on Northern Ireland. The other issue, on which the Government must act quickly, is supergrass trials—convictions on the uncorroborated evidence of one person.
Those things make countries overseas, whether Holland or the United States, very worried about returning a person to Britain to face charges arising out of the Northern Ireland system. Whether we finally change the system and go for the political system as it is now, with some changes, or whether we go over to the alternative, which I have suggested is one possibility—I would not put it any higher than that at the moment—we have to recognise that there is serious concern overseas and in this

country about the system of justice in Northern Ireland. In my view, that concern is justified. If we do not change that, we will always lose that part of the propaganda battle and that, to my mind, is extremely serious.
Obviously we will not be opposing the legislation tonight. It is appropriate, right and proper. However, it is time that we exercised those arguments a little further and recognised that the nature of terrorism in the modern world is different from what it used to be. Perhaps it is time we took a long hard look at what sort of situations we want extradition to relate to. Do we want to do it on a political basis, or on a more judicial basis, or is there some other model to which we could turn? I do not pretend to have any argument. I have not laid down any hard and fast party policy tonight, and I do not wish to. I simply wish to express considerable anxiety about the way in which we have allowed some of our judicial and democratic safeguards to slip in recent years to the extent that we have been found guilty before the European Court of Human Rights more often than has any other country in western Europe. In previous centuries we led the world; we now, sadly, follow. That is profoundly sad and something to which we should look very carefully, in order to try to right the situation.

Sir Eldon Griffiths: I do not intend to take up the interesting discourse of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley). However, I must put two points very directly to him. First, I do not accept, nor will many hon. Members, his proposition that whereas once we led the world in our concern for liberty, now we follow. That is a wholly offensive and inaccurate statement. This country can still hold its head very high in the defence of liberty. Secondly, his endorsement of the order would be a little more convincing if the Labour party, with his enthusiastic support, had not consistently voted, on three-line Whips, against the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976. That Act is essential if we are to hope to contain terrorism in this country and, indeed, in Northern Ireland.
I want to make two propositions at the outset. First, it is a matter of the highest priority that terrorism shall be more effectively contained and, if possible, suppressed. Secondly, the only way to do that is by international collaboration.
A series of meetings in Europe and elsewhere have proclaimed the intention of Governments to collaborate more effectively. I acknowledge freely that during the past 18 months to two years there has been some evidence of improved international working together to contain this scourge. However, the practical co-operation that is required—and the order brings us directly to it—is, first, that there should be a much more effective exchange of intelligence between the security services of the various countries concerned; secondly, that there must be more effective working together of the police and security services and the provision to those services—if possible in a standardised form—of the most modern technology that is available to counter terrorism; thirdly, that each country must provide a body of law that makes it possible for its security services not merely to respond to terrorist actions but to pre-empt them. It is because the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act to some extent assists in pre-emption that I have always found it so surprising that the Labour party opposes it. The fourth


practical aspect must, of course, be a more effective way of achieving extradition. For that last reason, I welcome the order.
The order, and its effect, is limited and overdue. We should be unwise to expect too much of it. It contains far too many let-outs, to which I shall turn in a moment. For all that, it is an important and welcome step forward and I am sure that the House will accept it.
I want to make three points only about the order. Before doing so, will my hon. Friend the Minister of State tell the House what "plagium" is? I refer him to schedule 2, article 3. In paragraph 5(4) there is the phrase "kidnapping, abduction or plagium." My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison) asked me what "plagium" was and I said that I would find out. Perhaps my hon. Friend would care to enlighten us.

Mr. Mellor: I do not know, but I have had thrust into my hot little hand a piece of paper that has on it the words "Scottish kidnapping."

Sir Eldon Griffiths: One lives and learns. The origin of that noun must be extraordinary.
My first point is that it took far too long to get this arrangement through the United States Congress. I recognise the sterling work carried out in the United States by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and others, including hon. Members in all parts of the House. However, it took too long for Congress to agree to the changes that we required.
In the end we got the changes for two almost adventitious reasons. The first was the support by the President for the request by our Government. At a time when it is fashionable to knock President Reagan, it is right to record that his consistent support for the British position was of enormous help in Congress. I am quite sure that the measures would not have gone through Congress if it had not been for the raid on Libya. That raid remains a contentious matter, but I am quite sure that overall it was the most effective step against international terrorism that has yet been taken. I am sure that we would have found it difficult to achieve the amendment to American law if Congress had not been impressed by the Prime Minister's support for the United States when it launched the raid against terrorism in Libya.
My second point concerns the various let-outs, about which the Minister has fairly spoken. In article 3, in order to counterbalance the removal of the political offence exception, the Senate has put in what is described as the humanitarian safeguard. Extradition will, therefore, be prevented where the request is made for the purpose of trying or punishing a person
on account of his race, religion, nationality, or political opinions, or that he would, if surrendered, be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained or restricted in his personal liberty by reason of his race, religion, nationality or political opinions.
I have no doubt that between two liberal democracies like the United States and Britain it is perfectly proper that these matters should be safeguarded. No one who comes to this country need fear that he would be prejudiced on grounds of race, religion, nationality or political opinion. What matters is not the objective fact of the situation in the United Kingdom, but how an American court might perceive it.
Perhaps when the Minister replies to the debate he will say how he hopes to get over the possibility of American

courts—perhaps I should speak delicately—in those parts of the United States where the pressure of the Irish is greatest, making use of the political opinion let-out to prevent terrorists being returned to justice in the United Kingdom?
I recognise that the burden of proof is placed on the defendant who has to show that he would be at risk because of his political opinions. My hon. Friend will know that there is a good deal of case history in the United States to show that some courts are more inclined than others—if I may put it that way—to bend over in the direction of those who allege that people would not get a fair trial if they were returned to the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Hammersmith has helped people who hold that view.

Mr. Mellor: It may be of assistance if I reply now so that my hon. Friend may have a chance to comment. It was not our original intention that the humanitarian safeguard should be in the supplementary treaty. It was placed there during its passage through the Senate. Having said that, I must add that it is found in the Suppression of Terrorism Act 1978 which my hon. Friend has rightly commended. It applies automatically to countries which are signatories to the European convention on the suppression of terrorism and it is also found in the Fugitive Offenders Act 1967 which governs all our extradition arrangements with Commonwealth countries. As my hon. knows, it is very different from the political safeguards as was, because it relates to a fair trial, and, as he says, the burden of proof is on the defendant. I personally would take comfort from the case of Doherty—one of the notorious cases where we failed to get an IRA offender extradited in 1984—when the judge, refusing our extradition request under the political safeguard, specifically said that the 1981 trial of Doherty was a fair trial, suggesting that had these arrangements been in force the result would have been different. However, who can say?

Sir Eldon Griffiths: I do not wish to detain the House by going into detail about the Doherty case. I am aware of that judgment and the weight that British Ministers have put upon it in their discussions with the United States. I very much hope that my anxieties will not be realised.
I just want to leave one thought with my hon. Friend. Accepting the force of the Doherty point, perhaps some means ought to be found of ensuring that a certificate be produced in some circumstances—for example, by the United States Attorney-General—to any court in the United States so that, if the United States Government were willing, he could certify that in all respects he was satisfied that a fair trial could and would be achieved. I mention that simply because there was only one point on which I had some measure of agreement with what the hon. Member for Hammersmith said.
I have a connection with Northern Ireland through the RUC. I am a supporter of the Diplock courts. In the circumstances of Northern Ireland, I do not think it is possible at present to have juries. Equally, given all the safeguards that our judiciary has insisted upon, I think it is necessary to continue to use supergrasses in certain limited cases. But I am bound to accept that, as perceived from the United States, the combination of single judge courts and supergrasses may from time to time lead to difficulties.
Along with some of my hon. Friends, I had the pleasure the other day of hearing the Solicitor-General make a most admirable statement about the difficulties of changing the present arrangements in Northern Ireland. I well understand what he said, but it is right to leave the thought with the House that we have achieved an important step forward. It does not go anywhere near as far as I would have liked or, to be fair, as the Government would have liked. My view, having lived and worked in the United States for many years, is that there will continue to be some difficulty in this area. The prime difficulty may turn on the matter of the Diplock courts and the use of supergrasses. Therefore, it may be important to reinforce the Doherty safeguard with some further arrangements that British Ministers might wish to suggest to the United States in the months to come.
That opportunity could well arise when, after the passage of the new Criminal Justice Bill, which deals with the additional arrangements for extradition in this country, it will probably be necessary to add to this arrangement with the United States. When that comes about, I hope that my hon. Friend and the Foreign Secretary will seek ways and means of reinforcing the Doherty arrangement in order to avoid the anxieties which, frankly, I still have about this matter.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Like the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths), I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) in his ruminations, many of which could properly be dealt with only in a debate specifically devoted to considering circumstances in Northern Ireland.
This order deals with extradition from the United Kingdom, but, in so far as it is necessary to enable the supplementary treaty to be ratified, it is to be welcomed, even though much of the examination that we give to it is related to the reverse process of extradition from the United States to the United Kingdom.
There are a number of points upon which I should be grateful if the Minister would give further elucidation to the House. He might begin by confirming that there is a mistake in the order as laid before the House in schedule 2, in that the reference in paragraph 1 of schedule 2 to "paragraph 3" is clearly a misprint for "paragraph 5". No doubt, if the Minister is in need of assistance, he will be able to have that confirmed from the proper quarter in time.
More substantially, I should be grateful if the Minister would say something about the status of schedule to the order. Schedule 1 is not enacted by the terms of the order but is simply referred to in the preamble to the order. I take it therefore that, whereas schedule 2 becomes part of the law of the land, schedule 1, strictly speaking, does not. That may have a practical consequence when we read articles 3 and 4 of the treaty provisions set out in schedule 1.
It may be that article 3(b) is intended to apply wholly and exclusively to the United States, although in terms it does not. However, there is no such limitation in article 4. Article 4 provides:
A person arrested…shall be set at liberty upon the expiration of sixty days.

I take it that, that being part of the reciprocal conditions in the supplementary treaty, it is incumbent on us in this country to implement it. Perhaps the Minister will say exactly how it will be implemented if the first schedule is not being enacted by the order. Is it to be implemented merely administratively? In that case, it may be argued that, in the United States, they are making legislative provision to which no legislative provision will correspond on this side of the Atlantic.
It would be helpful in this connection if the Minister would confirm that the reciprocity established between the two countries as a result of the order and the supplementary treaty is complete and entire reciprocity—that is, that there is no respect in which obligations have been undertaken in one direction to which no obligations in the opposite direction correspond.
With regard to the contents of schedule 2, I was somewhat puzzled not only, like the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, by the word "plagium"—though I admit that the Oxford English dictionary did not enable me to recognise it as a Scotticism—but also by the omission of items 3 and 6. Item 3 is "rape". I do not know of any reason why, when we were about the business, we should not have included the offence of rape among those to which the provisions of the order apply. There may be some reason for that, but I am not clear what it can be. [Interruption.] The Minister has been good enough to conduct a running tutorial, but I shall understand if he does not wish to intervene at this stage.
The other offence that has been omitted is
assault causing actual bodily harm or injury".
I find that difficult to construe in connection with article 1 of the treaty provisions and the remainder of paragraph 5 of schedule 2. Article 1(d), to which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds specifically referred, rehearses a whole series of offences involving the use of various explosive and other devices which appear to go well beyond firearms offences.
Comparing that article with the provisions of paragraph 5 of schedule 2, there appears to be a gap—for instance, as to whether offences committed by means of a weapon other than an explosive or firearm are fully covered. If they are—and I suspect that it is intended that they should be—what was the point of article 1(d) specifically listing various forms of explosive and other offensive materials and weapons? It is difficult for the layman to construe that article in a way that brings out its importance and intention. I hope that the Minister will clarify those points when he replies to the debate.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: I, too, welcome the order, as far as it goes. However, I believe that it increases the complexity of the whole subject of extradition law. For that reason, it is understandable that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) showed a somewhat incomplete grasp of it. After all, under the Extradition Act 1870 there are some 44 treaties, each containing separate provisions directed to the countries concerned. That Act is about to he amended by the Criminal Justice Bill. It is a great pity that we did not have a separate extradition Act for that purpose and that we have now to lose that name in the Criminal Justice Bill.
There are 49 Commonwealth states that arrange extradition with us through reciprocal legislation. We do not need a treaty with any individual country in the


Commonwealth, but simply apply our own Fugitive Offenders Act 1967. There is also the Backing of Warrants (Republic of Ireland) Act 1965 applying to the Republic of Ireland alone. In addition, there are six multilateral treaties in which several countries have joined together—The Hague convention, the Tokyo convention, the Ottawa convention and one or two others, including the genocide convention—which have their own provisions regarding political offences. There is also the suppression of terrorism convention of the Council of Europe, which is strictly limited to its members and cannot therefore be applied to the United States of America.
This provision is an extension of the existing treaty of extradition between us and the United States. It was necessary to have schedule 2 in the order simply because the provisions of the supplementary treaty do not correspond, on all fours, with the provisions of the suppression of terrorism convention itself. When I first saw the heading of this Order in Council, I thought it inappropriate to link it to the legislation and treaty that we have signed with other members of the Council of Europe. However, I note that the power for applying some of these provisions lies in the Act that we passed to enforce the convention. That leads to a certain amount of difficulty in understanding the whole matter.
This order raises a number of questions. Assuming that the Criminal Justice Bill reaches the statute book, presumably it will be necessary to amend the principal treaty with the United States and all the other 43 treaties that we have concluded with foreign states.
A small point—why do we spell "offense" with an "s" in the order? It is not spelt that way in any other of our legislation, treaty or even in the principal treaty. Can a spelling correction be made? I hope that we do not adopt American spelling when dealing with matters that apply to British courts.
One notable omission from the supplementary treaty is conspiracy. In the context of Northern Ireland and the need for us to get at the godfathers of violence in Northern Ireland, that may prove to be a fatal omission in the effectiveness of the treaty itself because, very often, the people whom we really want are the godfathers, the instigators, the inciters and the conspirators—not necessarily those who are direct participants in the offences. That is a notable weakness of the supplementary treaty. I accept what has been said about the omission of certain offences that are contained in other treaties. Rape is not a terrorist offence as far as one knows, although it is always possible that it will be so treated——

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: It is in the Act.

Mr. Stanbrook: Indeed, it is in the Act, as the right hon. Gentleman says, but I understand that the explanation, in this case, is that when applied to the United States in a separate series of bilateral negotiations it has been omitted at the instances of the other party. That is another example of why the order is not on all fours with the original Act.
There is the possibility of reservations being made. Has the supplementary treaty been ratified by the United States of America yet? If not, is there not a possibility that there will be reservations of some substance before it is ratified? Let us hope not. But we know that the council of Europe convention on the suppression of terrorism has been ratified with reservations in many cases by European states, which are of fundamental importance and which,

in effect, make the provisions of the convention nugatory because they exclude offences of a political character. So I hope that we shall not have to suffer such an exception in any reservation that may be imposed by the United States.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: I also recall that a certain member of the Council of Europe, the Irish Republic, has still not ratified the European convention itself, despite all the fine words in the communique attached to the Anglo-Irish agreement.

Mr. Stanbrook: Indeed. Now we know why that promise is included in the communiqué, and not in the Anglo-Irish agreement itself, because it seems that we are not able to enforce it against the Republic of Ireland, although it has had 12 months in which to ratify it. It is supposed to be subject to legislation before the Irish Parliament, and even that has not yet been introduced. So that that calls into question the good faith of the Government of the Irish Republic.
With regard to the reservations in the supplementary treaty, I accept that the reservations about race, religion, nationality, political opinions and so on are now a fairly standard phrase, which applies to other such treaties. One cannot raise any objection about that.
The main reason why one should not be too critical is that in the end all these things are political, whether they are the reason for the decisions by some politically motivated judges, not just in the Republic of Ireland, but in the Netherlands recently, for example, and certainly in the United States, or whether it is that the extradition process, however judicial it is supposed to be in form, is ultimately a political decision by the Executive. In all our extradition law, we make the Executive ultimately responsible for extradition, and no one may be extradited against the will of the Minister concerned. I suppose that in the end that is a great safeguard and meets many of the points raised by the hon. Member for Hammersmith. After all, when the whole thing is subject to political decision and to the discretion of the Minister concerned, all the political points that he raised may be applied to act as safeguards.
However, as the Minister said, as between democracies, it is disgraceful that we should insist upon all these provisions and safeguards for accused criminals when we know that they provide fair trial and are themselves democracies. It is just another survival of the old chauvinistic nationalism of European countries which, in spite of their economic integration, and to some extent their political integration, are still not able to trust each other to try persons extradited from one country to the other without a whole series of safeguards when, if we were honest and willing to put the public interest of the whole of Europe to the test, we should not apply any restrictions whatsoever.
We should all have arrangements of the kind that we have with the Republic of Ireland with the backing of a warrants system whereby a warrant validly issued in one European Community country simply needs to be endorsed on the back by the country in which it is received and in which the criminal is thought to be hiding. That would be an example of trust in our European partners and one that is long overdue.

Mr. A. J. Beith: The alliance welcomes the order and shares the determination expressed in many parts of the House that people who commit terrorist crimes should be brought to justice and that arrangements between countries should make that possible.
The fact that Congress has eventually enabled these reciprocal arrangements, of which the order is but half, to be brought into effect is the result of a changed and more realistic climate of opinion in the United States and the recognition, even among those with emotional and historical links with Ireland, that terrorism is an evil wherever it is practised and that political motives provide no excuse for murderous acts and no basis for the avoidance of justice.
A number of people have helped in that process. British Ministers have worked hard to explain the Government's postion. Politicians from the Irish Republic have done the same and have faced hostile demonstrations in Boston and other North American cities. There has been a determined attempt by a number of people to make clear the real dangers of armchair republicanism when it condones or gives succour to murderous terrorism which is costing innocent lives on both sides of the community in Northern Ireland. We must all welcome the success of those efforts, to which many other people have contributed. Our diplomats in the United States have also worked hard at this task and their efforts, too, must be appreciated.
I have long since rejected the old concept of the "political offence" as a cover for all kinds of violence and terrorism. Adducing a political motive is not sufficient to protect someone from a court of justice. Other protections must therefore be provided, and it is perfectly reasonable that the order should contain a definition of the defence that a person should not be extradited if he can prove that there is reason to fear that his trial might be prejudiced or that he might be punished, detained or restricted merely on account of his race, religion, nationality or political opinions.
That may be thought unnecessary when both countries are democracies subject to the rule of law and with fair systems of justice, but there is no harm in reiterating that commitment and asserting that it is the basis of our extradition arrangements with any country in the world. We should not wish to make extradition arrangements other than on the basis of ensuring that no one was extradited and brought to trial merely on the basis of the opinions that he held or the group from which he came. Because the offence itself must be the basis of the trial, it must also be an offence in the country from which extradition is sought, and not peculiar to the country seeking extradition.
In any extradition treaty, each side must also be satisfied that the person extradited will have a fair trial. We know that the system operated within the constraints of Northern Ireland still provides a fair trial, but it is understandable that, sensing our concern that we still have in Northern Ireland a system different from that prevailing in England, Scotland and Wales, some people in the United States may argue that there is thus no basis for extradition. I wonder how confident the Minister is that United States courts will interpret this legislation on a

basis that will ensure that a person who has committed an offence in Northern Ireland is extradited for trial in Northern Ireland.
Clearly we must continue to strive to restore in Northern Ireland the patterns of judicial operation with which we are familiar in England, Scotland and Wales. I hope that that is an objective on both sides of the House and that we can move as quickly as possible in that direction. Anything which might even give a pretext for full-scale extradition not to operate is clearly something we would want to remove, quite apart from the other arguments which would lead us to want the system of justice in all parts of the United Kingdom to be on the same footing.
That is only part of the battle against terrorism. All the other measures that we have to take—security of airports, attempts to trace and track down and have advance warning of the activities of terrorists, denying to terrorists the means to carry out their terrorism, including arms—are vital to this.
We are bound to be concerned in this context if a country with which we have satisfactorily secured this agreement should find that its Administration, contrary to their own policy, are capable of supplying arms to a country which is supporting terrorism, only to see the proceeds of those deals used to support another group of people carrying out a guerilla war in yet a third country. As has been pointed out, the achievement of this vote in Congress may have owed something to our Prime Minister's support of President Reagan in his bombing of Libya. I think that our Prime Minister will find that she does not enjoy the same support of Congress in her backing of President Reagan over the whole Iranian arms issue. Indeed, many of the same Congress men who supported us on this issue in the crucial vote on this treaty are now voicing criticisms of their own Administration for taking actions which are not consistent with maintaining the battle against terrorism. Americans recognise that the integrity of the Government in the battle against terrorism must be maintained. Extradition treaties are only part of the process by which we can defeat terrorism—one of the worst evils that confronts our generation.

Mr. Mellor: I am grateful to the House for the warm welcome that it has given to these arrangements and the tributes that have been paid to the very hard work that went into negotiating them. The obvious care and attention that hon. Members who have contributed to the debate have paid to the supplementary treaty has been evidenced by the quality of the contributions that have been made and the detailed points that have been raised.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) ranged fairly widely over the extradition territory, and we shall return to that on the Criminal Justice Bill. I hope that I was of assistance to him during the course of his speech with a number of points. Apropos the prima facie case requirement, I hope very much that before giving notice that the Opposition might oppose that particular part of the arrangement he will consider the points that have been raised, particularly the widespread recognition evidenced by The Guardian leader, that we have to deal with the very real problems posed by the feelings of a number of friendly countries whose criminal justice system is different from ours. They are asked to perform the unwieldy contortions, as they see it, of having to bring a case, perfectly acceptable


in their courts, into a quite different form from our system. If we make it too difficult for them to extradite people from our country, they will lose interest in helping us. That is why we lost the Spanish extradition arrangements in 1977 and why it took us 10 years to get them back again, Marbella now being the largest open prison that we have.
Crime is now such an international phenomenon, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) is constantly reminding us, that we cannot afford to allow these things to get rusty, but where we are dealing with common law jurisdictions within the Commonwealth a prima facie case remains under the 1967 Act.
I appreciate the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds. Of course, all of us would have preferred it if the treaty that I am commending to the House tonight was the one originally initialled by the two Governments, not the one that came from the Senate. But, that having been said, this supplementary treaty from the Senate is still a worth while document, although it is not ideal.
I place some reliance—this is relevant to the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith)—on the thought processes of the judge in the Doherty case, who drew a distinction between the political safeguard that he applied against us and the requirenents of a fair trial—the humanitarian safeguard—by saying tht he was satisfied that Doherty's trial in 1981 in Northern Ireland, under the arrangements that prevail there, was fair.
But who can give guarantees—I am sure that no one is seeking a guarantee from the Dispatch Box—about what a judge in a foreign jurisdiction will think in any case which he considers? The scope for a perverse decision is much more limited than it was when the political safeguard, as broadly and consistently defined by the American courts, was in operation. At least we have dealt with that.
It is always a pleasure to participate in a debate with the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), who referred to my attempts to assist other hon. Members. I assure him that I would never try to give a master class in his presence, but I shall try—inadequately—to answer some of his points, I hope to his satisfaction. Those points reflect an intricate and detailed consideration of the measure I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for spotting the error. I am sorry that my well-paid staff, who will be deducted a month's wages, failed to do so. As I understand it, schedule 1 is incorporated into our extradition law by a combination of the Suppression of Terrorism Act 1978 and the extradition orders which will be laid by the Foreign Secretary.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned items 3 and 6 in the suppression of terrorism list. Item 3—rape—was left out because of our wish to cleave as closely as possible to the treaty, which omits rape, and because no English court would consider rape as being subject to political

considerations. As for assault, grievous bodily harm and upwards are included, but the Americans took the view that assaults below that were potentially too trivial to be included in the arrangements.
The firearms and explosives listed in article 1(d), led to difficulty, because the American attitude to firearms is different from ours, and their rules about the possession of firearms are markedly different from ours. The result is that article 1(d) reflected the wide range of weaponry which our laws agreed were unlawful. We cannot push the United States further than the list in 1(d), although it is fair to say—the right hon. Gentleman pertinently asked whether there was complete mutuality of obligation—that we are probably giving the Americans, although since the law is not in precisely the same form the parameters cannot be rigidly defined, more than they are gibing us, because some of our firearms offences are more widely drawn than theirs. We have very different cultural attitudes to the possession of firearms, but that is the only material difference in the points of mutuality that I would wish to draw to the attention of the House.
In reply to the interesting speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), I should say that the Americans have done their part to ensure that the arrangements are carried into force. I can cast the blame for the word "offense" on to another Department. We queried this before it was queried in the I-louse, and were informed by the Foreign and Commonwealth office, whose word is its bond and which we always accept, that the authentic text is the exchange of Notes and that the exchange of Notes was cast in American rather than English. So there we are. The impact of these arrangements on the Criminal Justice Bill is something that we would be able to take up with the United States, but we are under no obligation to do so. We could do so when the time comes.
The offence of conspiracy is absent because it falls foul of some of the mutuality provisions, and not only in the context of the United States. For that and other reasons, that offence is not generally extraditable, as we have found to our cost in a number of cases.
I am advised that the Irish Government have introduced legislation to ratify the European convention on the suppression of terrorism. It is still proceeding through the Dail. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office indicates that that is the position.
I hope that I have done justice to the careful debate that we have had by responding with equal care to the detailed matters that have been raised. I am grateful to the House for the warm welcome that it has given to these treaty arrangements, which I hope can now speedily complete their passage through Parliament.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the draft Suppression of Terrorism Act 1978 (Application of Provisions) (United States of America) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 20th November, be approved.

Tourism

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Trippier): rose——

Mr. Nigel Spearing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wish to draw the attention of the House to the documentation that is available on this matter. The report of the Scrutiny Committee dated 18 June 1986 has been available for some time, and it has been added to by a further report of the Scrutiny Committee, which was laid in the Vote Office at about 5 pm today. The later report is available to hon. Members if they have not already seen it.
There is a difficulty, because the motion refers to the
explanatory memorandum…dated 24th November 1986".
By definition, that was not made available to hon. Members until that day, which was two days ago, and the Scrutiny Committee considered it only today. The matters that arise from that do not come strictly within a point of order, and I recognise that the Minister may have taken this course to assist the House. I shall not pursue the matter further, Mr. Deputy Speaker, other than to say that I shall seek to catch your eye at a later stage if that is appropriate.

Mr. Trippier: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) for his courtesy in taking the time and trouble to write to me about the matter that he has raised. It may assist the hon. Gentleman, members of the Select Committee and, indeed, the whole House, if I make one or two remarks that may clear up the issue.
An explanatory memorandum was submitted to the House on 13 March and the Scrutiny Committee reported on 18 June that the proposal raised questions of political importance and recommended further consideration by the House. At that time we expected one of the proposals to be adopted at the June Internal Market Council, and we were grateful for the Committee's agreement that such consideration need not delay adoption. Adoption, however, did not occur in June, and it now seems likely that two of the proposals will be adopted in December.
I felt it desirable to allow the House to debate the document in advance of adoption, and tonight's debate was arranged accordingly. To ensure that Parliament had the fullest and most recent information available, the latest text of one of the proposals was received in French on Thursday 20 November and the memorandum was submitted to the House on Monday 24 November, which was more than 48 hours before the debate. I apologise to the House for there not being more time for the memorandum to be considered before the debate, but I felt it desirable that it should reflect in the most accurate manner the latest stage of discussions.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): I think that it is clear to the House, as the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) has said, that these are not matters for the Chair and cannot really be raised on a point of order. They concern the business of the House, which is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Spearing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope you will agree that documentation and adequacy of notice are matters for the House and come within the narrow limits of points of order.

Mr. Trippier: I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 4761/86 of 6th February 1986, a proposal for Community action in the field of tourism, and the supplementary explanatory memorandum from the Department of Employment dated 24th November 1986; welcomes tourism's contribution to economic growth in the Community; and endorses the Government's efforts to ensure that Community instruments on tourism accord with that objective.
Tourism is a very important economic activity for the United Kingdom and a major source of employment. About 1·2 million people are currently employed in the industry and it offers tremendous prospects for job growth in the future. The Government are determined to do all that they can to encourage the industry's development.
At a time when this Government are giving tourism greater recognition than at any time in the past, it is particularly apt that the European Community is now taking a much greater interest. It is good to see that others are recognising the economic importance of tourism, and I very much welcome the Community's involvement.
Whilst it is true that in one sense other member states could be regarded as our competitors in international tourism, there is also considerable scope for co-operation between member states for their mutual benefit. In many other areas of the world Europe is regarded as a single tourist destination by prospective visitors, and if people can be encouraged to visit Europe we have a good chance of persuading them to come to Britain during their trip. Closer co-operation can also enable countries, including the United Kingdom, to learn from others' experiences—from both successes and mistakes.
The Commission's document, which is the subject of tonight's debate, explains the Community's interest in tourism, its growing economic importance to member states and its importance to employment. The Commission is concerned that action should be taken to facilitate tourism within the Community, improve the seasonal and geographical distribution of tourism, make better use of Community funds, give better information and protection to toursits, improve working conditions in the tourist industry and increase awareness of the problems of tourism and organise consultations and co-operation. I am sure that the House will agree that these are all desirable objectives.
There is clearly a role for the Community as a whole if these objectives are to be achieved, but it is also important to bear in mind the different circumstances which may prevail in individual member states and the need for national priorities to be taken into account. The industry itself, throughout the Community, has a major part to play and its views must also be taken into consideration. I can assure the House that we shall continue to make these points quite clear in negotiations.
As a first step the Commission has put forward three legislative proposals and I would like to explain to the House their purpose and effect. All have undergone some changes already during negotiations in Brussels to meet concerns of member states.
The first is for a resolution on seasonal and geographical distribution of tourism. This seeks to extend both the tourist season and the distribution of tourist


traffic around individual countries and so reduce congestion and environmental stress at peak periods. Member states would encourage tourism in areas with surplus capacity, alternative types of holidays and holidays out of season. I stress that it is not the intention of this measure to redistribute tourist traffic between member states.
This resolution deals expressly with matters of great concern to the United Kingdom and we must welcome this timely and sensible proposal from the Commission. It is entirely consistent with the Government's policy of encouraging the dispersal of visitors from London and developing tourism facilities in the regions, with particular emphasis on areas of high unemployment and potential for increased tourism. It also accords with the Government's objective of extending the tourism season so as to provide better utilisation of investment in tourism facilities and retain seasonal jobs for a longer period. In 1986–87 we have provided the British Tourist Authority and the English Tourist Board with additional funds of over £6 million, 20 per cent. more than in 1985–86, to pursue these objectives.
I welcome the fact that earlier references in this proposal to discouraging tourism to saturated areas have now been removed. Whilst it is our concern to increase traffic to the regions, we would not wish actively to discourage visitors from any location. It must be remembered that London is a major draw for many overseas visitors and if they do not come to London they may not come to Britain at all. We must continue to exploit the attractions of London as a gateway to the rest of the country.
The second proposed measure is for a recommendation on standardised information for hotels. It will clearly be helpful for travellers within the Community to have available in a common format objective information about the facilities provided in particular establishments. I am pleased to see that the recommendation now calls on the industry itself to implement the proposed system. Greater flexibility has been provided as to the information to be given, and the symbols to be used have been agreed with industry representatives throughout the community.
The United Kingdom has recently made good progress in this direction domestically with the voluntary classification scheme for accomodation operated by the national tourist boards. It is envisaged that the commission's proposal will be implemented through this scheme in the United Kingdom, and I see it as a useful development of the scheme rather than as a replacement.
Although, in a number of other member states, there are a variety of compulsory hotel registration schemes, the United Kingdom Government are not convinced that the introduction of such arrangements in this country would be justified. We are anxious to remove unnecessary legislative burdens on industry wherever possible and to seek to encourage the industry itself to agree steps to improve standards. The recommendation is consistent with these aims.
We have some doubts about whether a community-wide grading system—that is, subjective rather than objective assessment—is ultimately achievable. At present, the proposed recommendation merely invites the commission to study with the industry the possibilities for action in this area. We would have no objections to that being done.
The third proposed measure is for a decision establishing a consultative and co-ordination procedure for tourism. All member states have welcomed the idea of setting up a framework in which individual experiences and problems can be discussed and scope for mutual cooperation explored. The present proposals are less widely drawn than originally, reflecting concerns expressed by member states. They would establish an advisory committee on tourism to facilitate consultation between member states and the Commission and, where appropriate, co-operation in the provision of services for tourists.
It is our intention that the proposed resolution and recommendation be put forward to the Council for adoption before the end of the United Kingdom Presidency. There remain a number of difficulties over the proposed decision, and it is now doubtful whether they can be satisfactorily resolved in time for Council consideration before the end of the year. As I mentioned earlier, these three proposals are only a first step. There are a number of other areas in which Community action is being considered and in which it is desirable. I should like to touch briefly on some of those.
Although tourism is widely recognised as an important sector of economic activity, there is a shortage of reliable indicators at Community level. Existing statistics are not comprehensive, and differing methodologies make proper analysis and comparison of performance difficult. It is proposed to study the possibilities of producing harmonised statistics on tourism throughout the Community. Within the United Kingdom, concern was previously expressed at the adequacy of statistical data on tourism in the Government document entitled "Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs". A review has since been carried out and a number of improvements are already in hand. We shall be happy to work with the Community with a view to achieving further improvements.
In a number of other member states, those working in the tourism industry regrettably encounter certain obstacles. Tourist guides, tour managers and couriers are sometimes hindered in their activities by protectionist measures favouring nationals of the country concerned. The Government are committed to a policy of free trade and welcome the Commission's investigations into these matters.
We also welcome the moves under way within the Community to liberalise air travel between member states. The United Kingdom Government are opposed to restrictive practices which keep fares unnecessarily high. It has already been demonstrated that lower fares and greater freedom to start new services stimulate traffic and, consequently, the development of tourism in member states.
Those are but examples of useful assistance to the development of tourism which do not involve substantial public expenditure by either the Community or individual member states. The Commission proposes to consider whether Community funds could be more effectively deployed for tourism development. We certainly wish to see the tourism industry receiving a fair share of Community funds, but we could not support a substantial increase in Community expenditure. The Government believe that the main responsibility for tourism investment must rest with the private sector.
Nevertheless, it can be expedient to use Community funds for the promotion of the Community as a


destination to prospective visitors from third countries to supplement national promotion efforts. I understand that assistance was made available this year to the European Travel Commission for that purpose.
I hope that I have illustrated the potential benefits to the United Kingdom tourism industry which stem from the Commission's proposals, and I therefore commend them to the House.

Mr. Barry Sheerman: Although we in the Labour party do not wish to divide the House, we wish to take issue with some of the points that the Minister made in his brief remarks.
A problem with the order is its distinct strands. The European Commission, to its credit, appreciates that a sensible, well thought through policy on tourism must be given a high priority in the European Community. It is an important industry. Indeed, within 18 months it will be the largest single employer in the United Kingdom. The Commission is aware of the numbers of people employed in the industry and the amount of revenue that member states gain from it.
Unfortunately, it seems from the Minister's remarks and the Government's response to the Select Committee's report that in the past few months the Government have not learnt anything about the necessity of having a positive policy on tourism. Regrettably, not only are the Government behind and reluctant to move in the direction of the all-party Select Committee's report and recommendations, but they are unwilling to take on board many of the more interesting and exciting proposals emanating from the European Commission.
Some of those include facilitating tourism and improving the seasonal and geographical distribution of tourism. The Minister said that the Government accept and applaud those proposals, but if one is to make an impact on these matters, one must do something about it. The Select Committee gave sound advice about how Governments extend the season—they subsidise the wage bills of companies which keep tourist attractions open for much of the season. It is a case of the chicken and the egg. If one relies on market forces, one never breaks through the traditional season. One must encourage a longer season. The sensible proposals of the Select Committee have still not been acted on.
The Minister mentioned improving working conditions in the tourist industry, but skated quickly over them. Let us not talk of the myth of the tourist industry. We recognise that it is a good employer for a high percentage of those working in it in full-time, well-paid jobs and enjoying its prosperity. However, about 20 per cent. of the industry involves seasonal, short-term low-paid jobs. People in them are vulnerable and need protection and help. None of the Government's employment strategies and proposals has done anything to help those exploited people, many of whom are women.
The Government missed a tremendous opportunity to give better information and protection to tourists. The Select Committee clearly stated that it was time that British people on holiday in Britain and foreign visitors to Britain should be able to find out what standard of hotel they would stay in. They pay their money, but they must have some criteria on which to judge whether they get

value for money. Other countries started to do that a long time ago, but the Minister still says that it must be up to voluntaryism. The industry may be asked to act on the grading of hotels, but we know that it does not operate in over half the hotels in our country. It is time that British tourists going on holiday in their own country and foreign visitors had some guarantee of value for money. It is time that we acted in that area. Surely it can only be good for our visitors and expand the number of people wanting to come to our country if they know that they will have some benchmark by which to judge what they will get.
I do not think that voluntaryism works. The European Commission suggests that it does not work, as does the Select Committee. It is about time that a Government with a positive policy towards tourism introduced a system that made sense. I suspect that we will not get that because the Minister and the Government cannot listen and learn from the Select Committee or from the Commission as they still worship at the temple of market forces.
The Minister says that he welcomes the proposals to broaden tourism to the regions and to places where there is high unemployment. There could be no more heartfelt agreement from someone from my part of the country, indeed from the Minister's part of the country or from my hon. Friends, about the potential for expanding tourism and bringing tourists to the delights of other parts of the country they do not normally visit. It is important to realise that market forces will not bring them. The great canal system of our country will not be developed and exploited in the best way by private enterprise. The best sort of relationship, is a harmonious and creative relationship between the public and private sectors and national Government and local government.

Mr. David Maclean: rose——

Mr. Sheerman: I have never seen private enterprise taking on the great capital expenditure, for example, of opening up a whole reach of the canal system of our country. Once it is done by a progressive local authority, private capital will come in and provide the hotels, pubs and boating facilities and all the attractions for tourists. However, it needs a planned partnership——

Mr. John Butterfill: Has not the hon. Gentleman heard of the canal societies up and down this country that are doing that very thing by voluntary labour, not through the local authorities? I can take the hon. Gentleman to canals where that is being done.

Mr. Sheerman: If the hon. Gentleman can give me any example of canal societies that are doing the massive task of capital reconstruction of our canal systems without Government money, I should like to hear about it. I should be interested to hear of an example not using money from the Manpower Services Commission. That is Government money, too. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head and now thinks that perhaps I am right. A creative and planned partnership between the public and private sectors is the way to get our tourist industry booming.
If the Government want to bring tourism as a major industry to those parts of our country not yet visited by many tourists, they must invest and allow local government to invest in the infrastructure that will make those parts of the country attractive. That will mean providing more than £6 million to the British Tourist


Authority. Local government must be liberated to do that job. The private sector must also be allowed to work within a planned policy framework.
The Minister's speech demonstrated that the Government have missed a number of opportunities. The last missed opportunity is referred to in the memorandum: a guarantee for those who go on package holidays. The Government ought vigorously to be trying to ensure—in the European Community, in the Commission and in the Council of Ministers—that those who go on package holidays to other member states are not profoundly disappointed by what they have bought. The package holiday is a unique consumer product. The consumer pays in advance for his holiday. According to the memorandum, 25 to 35 per cent. of consumers of package holidays are profoundly disappointed by the product that they buy—many of them dramatically so. They are re-routed to accommodation in resorts to which they do not want to go. The Government have failed to push hard enough for a recommendation that would improve the position for British consumers of package holidays.
The Opposition do not intend to divide the House. However, the tourist industry needs to move forward a great deal faster than it is moving now. Faster movement calls for a partnership between the public and the private sector. The Government must not leave a major industry at the mercy of the vagaries of market forces.

Mr. Conal Gregory: Tourism is a vitally important industry in the EEC, earning some £32 billion each year from overseas sources. Of course, in the United Kingdom tourism is our fastest growth industry. The British Tourist Authority forecasts that by 1988 Britain will be receiving 16 million overseas visitors who will spend £7·5 billion. In addition, the industry will see the expenditure of £7 billion by our citizens in the home market.
I welcome this debate—it is only the fifth debate on tourism since the general election—and the opportunity to discuss key EEC issues that are raised by European Community Document 4761/86. I declare an interest. I am the parliamentary consultant to Consort Hotels, the largest consortium of independent hoteliers in the United Kingdom, each of whose properties contributes substantially to the local community.
York is a leading tourism venue, where the industry now employs about 6,200 people. However, if the multiplier effect were applied in economic terms, one could see how dependent are so many related, or quasi-related, firms to tourism—from the laundries and bakers to the printers and language schools. In microcosm, it epitomises many of the problems relating to the development of tourism that are highlighted in the Commission's communication. May I he permitted, however, to return to some illustrations from York later in the debate and to dwell now on the general principles?
This Government, more than any other, have recognised the significance of tourism, and especially its place in terms of employment. It is right, therefore, that tourism should be further developed in the Community during the British Presidency. We must recognise that the visitor industry is a relatively new policy area for the EEC. It was only four years ago that the Commission produced its
initial guidelines for a Community policy for tourism

that identified areas where better co-ordination between member states would be beneficial.
Two related proposals have already been submitted to the Council. I refer to the draft recommendation on fire safety in hotels and to the draft recommendation on easing controls when crossing intra-Community borders. I urge my hon. Friend to examine the working of those controls. Often, British customs officers and regulations make life for tourists quite unreasonable. For example, senior citizens on a coach are required to get out and manhandle their luggage without trolleys and present each item to customs before re-presenting it to the driver and reboarding the vehicle. If that is not enough to turn off American visitors, I do not know what is.
The draft resolution which seeks a better seasonal and geographical distribution of tourism is to be welcomed if those initiatives reduce the surplus occupancy and ensure permanent rather than cyclical employment. Hoteliers and other providers of leisure facilities have been enterprising in promoting out-of-season holidays. Indeed, the mini-break is the fastest growth sector of the holiday industry. Increasingly, people are taking two or three short holidays.
After housing and food, holidays form the largest single item of family expenditure. This provides solid work. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) did not call them jobs for ice cream salesmen, as his predecessors on the Opposition Front Bench have done, nor did he call them Mickey Mouse jobs as he has done before. I am pleased to see that change of emphasis by the Opposition and glad to note that the hon. Gentleman did not denigrate this key sector of the industry. It is quite erroneous to equate service with servility. Service jobs are permanent jobs in an exciting field.
The action points identified in the Government paper "Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs" and pursued in the "Action for Jobs in Tourism" report have been taken up by the national boards. I was pleased to see the pilot scheme undertaken by the English Tourist Board with the northwest and south-east regional tourist boards. That will encourage tourist information centres to work in closer co-operation with tourist companies. It should enable the tourist information centres to provide more information and advice and, therefore, to give a better service. There is certainly scope for closer dialogue between the tourist information centres and the providers of mass transport.
Why do we not see more illustrated boards at train and coach stations showing the accommodation that is available and other facilities and a freefone link? West Germany has good examples of such displays. It is a development worthy of promotion and joint study in Europe.
The English Tourist Board's "Let's Go" campaign is specifically designed to promote awareness of the attractiveness of off-season breaks. I applaud its "Off Peak Value" logo. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier), the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, has not spoken about that, so I shall leave him a little fresh ammunition for his wind-up speech. That logo is designed to promote the theme of off-season holidays. I applaud also the initiatives of the awards to be made for off-peak promotions. They are sponsored by the Council for Travel and Tourism, the British Airport Authority, the British Incoming Tour Operators Association and the British Resorts Association.
A radical solution that could help all European countries would be to standardise the Easter holiday.


There is no doubt that when Easter falls in mid April the tourist season starts in earnest. When it is at the end of March there is often a hiccup in trading in April. The spread and distribution of bank holidays is similar.

Mr. Tony Speller: Does my hon. Friend think that the Easter holiday should be standardised regardless of the views of the Christian church? Would that be advantageous for tourism?

Mr. Gregory: I am speaking about the instability in the tourist industry caused by the constant movement of the date of Easter. As my hon. Friend will know, there is within the Christian churches a variety of different Easter dates. The spread of those dates has a bad effect on tourism.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: I am not clear about my hon. Friend's point. Is he saying that there should be a fixed Easter date?

Mr. Gregory: I am, and I am further suggesting that it should be a common date in the Christian churches.
I should like to develop the theme of the spread of holidays. Bank holidays are certainly within the purview of the Government, even if the Christian churches are not. The distribution of bank holidays so that they were on dates similar to the rest of the EEC would benefit the United Kingdom. We had two bank holidays 21 days apart in May and that was nonsensical. We should consider one at the end of October or the beginning of November, because that would create a mini boom for tourism.
The hon. Member for Huddersfield referred to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which recommended that for two years the Government should provide a grant of 30 per cent. of the labour cost of tourist facilities remaining open for one month additional to the period which the enterprise concerned was open in the previous year. Britain rightly attaches importance to promoting our islands as a year-round destination choice, but there was not a fulsome response to the Select Committee's initiative. It said that
a combination of creative marketing with selected project development is the most effective way of dealing with the problem of seasonality".
What have the studies revealed, should the Select Committee's advice be taken, and how does Britain compare with other states?
As I referred to under-occupancy, it is fair to refer to the peak times for tourism. What work are the Government doing to promote local authorities each to produce visitor strategies which examine such questions as adequate car parking? For example, the labour-controlled city council in York refuses to acknowledge the importance of tourism to the economy by not having a chief officer designated with the responsibility, by not filling vacancies for, for example, a conference officer and by deliberately ignoring the chief mode of travel, the car. It will not adequately signpost accommodation or facilities and argues that visitors should effectively "park and ride" rather than the council building adequate car parks. Will the Minister review such strategies and give advice to encourage a better distribution?
Statistical information on tourism is not particularly good. Currently, statistics are collated by the World Travel

Organisation in Madrid, the OECD in Paris and EuroStat in Luxembourg. Unfortunately, there is no common statistical base. All components of the tourism industry need better information for planning and strategy, and I urge the Government to establish a professional standardised basis throughout Europe.
Does compliance with the resolution on a better visitor distribution require amendment to existing legislation, particularly the Tourism (Sleeping Accommodation Price Display) Order 1977 and the statutory hotel registration scheme in Ulster under the Development of Tourist Traffic Act (Northern Ireland) 1948?
The second policy area under review, which recommends standardised hotel information, will certainly help travellers to break down language barriers. However, several questions arise, and I should be grateful if the Minister would respond to them. Will it be mandatory, and who will take responsibility for collating and checking this information on standardised hotels? As Great Britain—but not Northern Ireland—is out of line with the rest of Europe in not having an official government classification scheme for accommodation, will such information form a valuable introduction? How will a hotel be defined? Will it include premises that advertise accommodation but which do not currently pay commercial rates or VAT?
The interpretation of such facilities is riddled with anomalies at local authority level and urgently requires Government classification. Will the British Government take up the invitation to produce a harmonised hotel classification system for the EEC?
No wonder that the visitor to Britain is confused. Not content with the stars of the AA and the RAC as well as the Michelin and Egon Ronay ratings, he has the national tourist board crowns. There is no consistency, so that the two-star AA or RAC hotel can easily be graded four crown. Unless this is withdrawn and reconsidered in full consultation with the industry—I am sure the Minister will agree that there was a lack of consultation with the industry—Britain is shoring up a time bomb of complaints.
We need a well defined easily understood national grading system that has industry support, will appeal to consumers and have the authority of Government. Northern Ireland had operated a successful scheme since the 1940s, and I see no reason why we should not follow suit.
I believe that greater understanding of facilities will lead to travel beyond the already familiar centres. For example, only 40 per cent. of Americans visiting the United Kingdom move outside the capital. The percentage is better for Europeans in that 46·4 per cent. of French visitors, almost 60 per cent. of West Germans and more than 45 per cent. of Dutch visitors travel beyond London.
The other aspect under consideration tonight—the draft decision to establish a consultation and co-ordination procedure in tourism—is certainly overdue. Even in Whitehall, some 13 Departments have a special interest in tourism. Clearly mutual co-operation is necessary within the Community. It makes no sense for tour managers to be treated inconsistently. In some countries they require special licences and have to take special examinations. There is no harmony on that matter within the EEC. Furthermore, United Kingdom travel agents cannot sell packages in France and Spain.
Tonight's debate coincides with the World Travel Market being held at Olympia this week. We are making good efforts to achieve a free market in air travel, but there has not been an adequate push in Europe to remove the restrictions on accommodation and other leisure facilities. Within the EEC there is the Youth Committee, which includes tourism as that is regarded as part of culture, or "kultur" as the Germans call it, and there is the Inter Group on tourism akin to our Back-Bench Committee. However, there is still no tourism committee for this great growth industry. I hope that during the British Presidency such an initiative will be developed.
This year we have seen the spectre of terrorism undermine this great industry. The fragility caused by the Achille Lauro incident and the bombings in Greece, Italy and France surely must be dealt with by a more permanent structure. I hope that the EEC documents before the House will help the industry along that road.

Mr. Michael Hancock: This is a welcome opportunity to speak on tourism. I declare an interest, as I come from Portsmouth, which, in future, hopes to be the second major tourist attraction outside of London. It is also good to be able to talk to the Minister about something other than mogul foods in Portsmouth and tins of canned curry.
We have all accepted that tourism has enjoyed a rapid and uninterrupted expansion over the past 15 years, and the revenue from the industry has increased in the United Kingdom almost sevenfold in that period. The importance of tourism, as the Minister rightly said, should not go unnoticed in the short term, as it has a long-term role to play in finding worthwhile, lasting jobs for the whole of the Community.
There is justification in claiming that more needs to be done to help tourism, and the action should come not only from the EEC but from the Government as well. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) was correct to assume that there the Government can play a real role. He suggested that there was a two-part role, but I suggest that there is a three-part role—through local authorities, the Government and private enterprise. Portsmouth is a classic example of how, given the right incentives, initiatives and ideals, the three-pronged co-operation can bear fruitful results.
The Minister recounted the six points upon which the documents are based which would facilitate tourism within the Community. As I represent a constituency which includes the second largest ferry port in the country, I understand that the facilitation of the movement of tourists into and out of this country is of great importance. However, it has taken 10 years to get proper signs erected in Portsmouth directing people out of the ferry port to London. There was resistance to that all along the line from various organisations. Even a "Welcome to Great Britain" sign was a controversial issue when the ferry port was opened. It took us 10 years before we managed to have proper signs in the city, and it has taken 15 years to create an overnight staying spot in Portsmouth for continental visitors arriving in the city with trailers. It has taken 15 years to find the right place and provide a facility that is common in most European towns and cities.
Direction must be given on tourism—there is not enough of that. Certainly the Government do not give enough assistance.
The second point is the improved seasonal and geographical distribution of tourism. Once again this is a laudable sentiment, but what does it really mean? Does it mean that the queues waiting to view the Mary Rose and HMS Victory—and next year HMS Warrior—will continue to stand in the open, when it is raining, in August? Are we seriously suggesting that the tourist season can be prolonged to October in Portsmouth, and yet still not provide shelter? Believe me, the attractions of Nelson's flagship diminish greatly after standing for an hour in the rain with two children who are soaking wet by the time they get on board—and then have to pay to see round the ship.
If the season is to be prolonged—and that can he achieved in many ways—we must consider the cost implications. We must find a means to provide the wherewithal for local authorities and private enterprise. In many instances planning committees are a great obstacle to prolonging the tourist season. They obstruct the entrepreneur who wants to promote a longer season and bring attractions to parts of the country that are innundated with tourists during the summer but see none in the winter.
We must find better ways to achieve that aim—for example, through the better use of Community funds. I defy any hon. Member to say that there is an easy way to obtain Community funds to promote leisure and pleasure activities in this country. They simply are not there. Local authority after local authority is spending great sums of money trying to buy consultants to tell them how to obtain those funds—let alone actually achieve some money from the EEC in the long run. This year, when Britain holds the presidency, it should be trying to find an initiative that allows those funds to be more easily accessible to local authorities and entrepreneurs, who can then get tourism really moving along.
Hon. Members have said that tourism will be the biggest employer in future. It will not be if these obstacles are not removed and if funds from the EEC are not forthcoming. The Government must recognise that they have a role, at least in pump priming in many respects.
Another point is the provision of better protection and information for tourists—once again something that no one would deny. In Portsmouth, hotel after hotel has closed or been converted to a nursing or rest home, even as we try to attract more tourists to the town. There is a real shortage of hotel spaces. We are doing little or nothing to help people modernise their hotels. Many owners simply cannot find the resources to modernise, let alone find a standardised method of advertising. Once again the Government have a role to play if there is to be better protection and information for tourists.
When I took my children to Beaulieu in the summer, as I stood in the queue with several hundred others waiting to pay an exorbitant price to see Lord Montagu's exhibition, an American tourist—who happened to be married to an English woman—told me of his strange experience at the hotel where he was staying in the New Forest. Apparently he was paying twice as much for his accommodation as the person in the next room. When he made inquiries, he was told that the rate that he was paying was applicable to his room. He asked why the person in the next room was paying almost 50 per cent. less, and the manager was reluctant to answer him. That American went away thinking that there was one cost for the local and another for him. How on earth can we hope to attract


people when somebody leaves our country with that impression? His wife said that unfortunately that was not an untypical reaction by Americans when they go home. They feel that they have been ripped off.

Mr. Speller: Does the hon. Gentleman have any reason whatsoever for saying that any hotel or hotel company in this country charges a different room rate for a patriot and for an expatriate? If he does, would he care to say where he gets his information from, as opposed to hearsay from the New Forest, or wherever?

Mr. Hancock: I was repeating what was said to me in all innocence. The people did not know that I was a Member of Parliament or had any interest in tourism. It was just a conversation. I asked the chap where he was staying and whether he was enjoying his stay in the New Forest, and he replied, "Yes, but I have had an annoying experience over the cost in the hotel." That reflects badly on our country. Undoubtedly, we need a standardised system of tariffs, and of getting that information around. The hon. Member for York (Mr. Gregory) hit the nail on the head by saying that it was long overdue. Undoubtedly it is. An initiative from the English Tourist Board, backed by the Government, should bring that about. Many of the hotel chains and individual hotels would welcome that—it is needed.
We would all support improved working conditions in the tourist industry, but sadly it is hit or miss, area by area and job by job. There is still an awful lot to be desired in the conditions in which people have to work and their terms of employment. It is a mistake to kid ourselves that everything in the garden is rosy. That simply is not so. We welcome those jobs, but we must find ways to make sure that there is a proper, firm basis for people wanting to work and to stay in the industry. We have to make the conditions of employment that much better. There must be a twofold approach by the unions and management.
We have to increase awareness of the problems of tourism and organise consultation and co-operation. If anything, the most important thing is to understand the problems of tourism. We have to do that. We have to find ways of consulting within the industry, with each other and with Europe about those very points. Perhaps the document that we are debating is the way forward.
I should like to talk about my area, which stretches from the edge of the New Forest in the west to Chichester in the east, and from the Isle of Wight in the south to Winchester in the north. Portsmouth is at the centre, I am glad to say. We cannot sustain ourselves as a major tourist attraction unless we have many of the things that I have spoken about—better hotels, standardised conditions in hotels, making them attractive, and better signposting so that people can see what we have on offer. We have to consider whether we price ourselves out. Do we have attractions which people will visit only once and not return to because we overcharge them for their enjoyment?

Mr. Butterfill: I am a little puzzled. The hon. Gentleman said that standardised conditions in hotels would make them more attractive. When I, and, I am sure, many of my hon. Friends, go abroad or to a hotel in this country, we find the fact that hotels are different attractive. They differ from each other. Why is the hon. Gentleman so insistent on standardisation?

Mr. Hancock: I am not suggesting for one moment that every hotel should be the same. The basic minimum standards are what we need. Few hotels pride themselves on advertising the fact that they have en suite bathrooms and facilities in the rooms. We are less than pushy, if that is the right word, in trying to advertise what is available. We should look carefully at that matter.
It is interesting to see how easy it is to get facilities abroad. Recently in Brussels, in the hotel in which I was staying with colleagues from the House, it was interesting that we could see what was available not only in our hotels but in other hotels in the centre of Brussels. We could compare what was available. In ferry ports, airports or railway stations in Great Britain, we should have such information and allow visitors to judge.
We need to make better use of our resources. The New Forest is a classic example of an area that is over-used in the summer and has virtually no visitors at all in winter, but which has major attractions which could and should be used to draw people all the year round. The drawback, sadly, is lack of resources in both the public and private sectors. My plea to the Minister is therefore not just to support the proposals before us, but to recognise that we must do a damned sight more if we are really to go places in tourism. If the rise of the past 15 years were to level out it would be a disaster for many reasons, not least the loss of employment prospects. The drive to sell our country and specific areas of it must be pushed harder and harder.
I am sorry to hear of the attitude of the hon. Member for York to his local authority. I hope that that is not common, because many local authorities have realised the enormous potential of their areas. Bradford is a good example. Another is Southampton, where the Labour-controlled authority has gone out of its way to promote the historic points in the area and to draw people to it. It is trying to rejuvenate the dock area and, to its credit, has made enormous progress in the past two or three years. It is not a matter of Labour and Conservative authorities having different opinions. It is a matter of mentality and of ambition for the area. The Government must foster and nuture such developments and encourage other authorities to take note of what can be achieved. Portsmouth, too—a Conservative-controlled authority, but working with the unanimous support of councillors of all parties—has tried to promote co-operation with the Ministry of Defence and private companies in the area, but the vital infrastruscture of hotels and other facilities is still lacking.
I hope that the Minister will find ways in which the Government can do more in the way of pump priming, because I believe that for a very small investment now an area such as south Hampshire could draw enormous benefits in the next decade or more. I hope that that kind of ambition for tourism and its development will flourish and bring even greater benefit to all of us through the present Minister and his colleagues, but we shall have to see whether their actions are as good as their mouths.

Mr. David Harris: I must confess that I do not share to the full the enthusiasm for these documents displayed by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) or by the hon. Member for Portsmouth. South (Mr. Hancock), who apparently spent one night in Brussels. As a Member of the European Parliament I spent


quite a few nights in Brussels and I remember the first meeting of the inter-group on tourism mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Gregory).
I regard the documents as well intentioned but unlikely to achieve very much. They set out generalised views about tourism to which we all subscribe. We all agree that tourism is a most important industry, not least in Cornwall where we have just had two very bad summer seasons. Frankly, I doubt whether implementing everything contained in these documents would have overcome the difficulties that we experienced or added to tourism and the benefits of tourism in that part of the world. I am afraid that if some of the suggestions in the second paper—the Council's recommendation on standardised information on hotels—were carried out in a statutory or mandatory, rather than a voluntary, way, they would hinder the tourist industry.
I looked at some of the proposals and recommendations—put forward, no doubt, by an excellent bureaucrat in Brussels—which will probably be endorsed by the European Parliament. They suggest that inns, hotels and motels with 10 beds should advertise their prices in their brochures and in their premises. That is fair enough, but they should also show them in European units of account. What is more, they should update this information and bring forward proposals for no fewer than 26 standardised symbols for hotels.

Mr. Butterfill: Does my hon. Friend realise that they have to be done in three languages?

Mr. Harris: I was coming to the point that they should be not just in English but in two other languages. These signs portray a baffling variety of services and activities, and I wonder about the physical difficulty of displaying them in a hotel guide—for example, for west Cornwall. It would be very difficult.
More worrying than that, if this were ever put on a mandatory basis, is that all this should be checked regularly by some hotel body. My hon. Friend the Minister—who I thought struck exactly the right note in his opening speech and attitude to this matter—in his explanatory note from the Department rather glossed over the cost and gave the impression that it would be minimal. I do not think it would be minimal to check effectively on this. I am terribly worried that in subscribing to the ideals to which we all subscribe we could somehow go down this road and switch from a voluntary to a mandatory system, with all the bureaucracy that that involves—and to what effect? I suspect very little at the end of the day.
What will extend the season is for individual hoteliers to seize the opportunities that exist now and provide services on attractive terms, not terms subsidised by the Government. They should go out into the market place and provide services. My experience, having studied the tourist industry in the south-west in recent years, is that those hotels or, indeed, other components of the tourist industry—attraction centres and entertainment centres which provide good value for money—succeed at all stages of the industry. That will boost the tourist industry more than a whole of lot of well-meaning directives from Brussels. I am a European and proud of it, but I do not think that this is an answer to the problem. The answer is service, quality and value for money.
I shall give one example to the House of the way in which the tourist industry has been extended to great

advantage in one part of my constituency. A few years ago I was very worried about the position with regard to the isles of Scilly. The isles of Scilly tourist industry appeared to be in decline. Certainly it was in difficulties. Parts of that industry joined together and gave it a boost by putting money into it. They did not get great dollops of money from Brussels or anywhere else. They did it themselves. They seized and developed the opportunity to develop the season, and now many thousands of bird watchers visit the isles of Scilly in September and October. That has been a tremendous boost to the season. That could be done by many other groups, although not always with bird watchers. That is a far more valuable way of extending the season than a pious wish in a document from Brussels. I am not hostile to the Commission or to the European Parliament, but I do not believe that this is the way forward. I applaud the Government's attitude to these documents.

Mrs. Elizabeth Shields: As many hon. Members have said, tourism is a matter of national and international importance. If properly promoted it can bring much confidence and hope, especially to areas which suffer from job losses and unemployment. It is a very positive industry, because it enables councils and individuals alike to be creative in a wide variety of ways. Many jobs result from tourism, and they are especially important in rural areas, which have suffered considerably from the loss of work, transport, shops and schools.
With those country towns and villages very much in mind, this summer, Ryedale district council entered on its first full year of marketing tourism. By contrast with the council of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Gregory), a special tourist officer was appointed by Ryedale district council with responsibility to promote what is in my opinion—perhaps I am biased—one of the loveliest districts in the country. The officer has introduced a series of initiatives, and the result has been a campaign to highlight the village heritage of the area. Among its 156 parishes, Ryedale has many of interest and some of special charm and character.
Local history, architecture and geographical features are included in the promotion, and the publicity of "Ryedale's Quest" has been widespread and successful. Each part of the country, too, must examine its cultural heritage and sites of interest and work on them, especially in our smaller communities.
Tourist attractions should not be tied into the summer months. We must extend the traditional period for tourists, because many people now have leisure time at much less popular periods of the year. Thus, seasonal use can be made of specific associations. As Christmas approaches, we in Ryedale are looking forward to our first Dickens festival to mark the visit of the novelist to Malton in 1843 to his lawyer friend, Charles Smithson. The offices currently used as the local museum, known as "The Dickens House" are thought to have been the inspiration for "A Christmas Carol". Next year, a converted former prisoner-of-war camp at Malton will be opened to the public, reproducing many aspects of life during the 1940s. It will be open all the year round, inviting educational visits from children and adults, and is a constructive and imaginative use of an otherwise derelict site.
Of course, marketing is a priority. It should be developed in a controlled, sensitive manner so that


hitherto unspoilt parts of the country will not be harmed or destroyed. There should be free consultancy on marketing, as we have had this year from our district council, for local businesses and firms, because, in the long run, the results of good promotion are beneficial to tourists and residents alike.

Mr. David Maclean: I welcome this opportunity to debate tourism, because it will draw attention to the fact that it is an important industry. As many hon. Members have said, it is one of the most rapidly growing industries in the United Kingdom and has the potential for the greatest employment. That has happened, not through some great Socialist paradise of planning, but through free and private enterprise. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), suggested that we needed all these marvellous plans and these tripartite agreements, but that would be the death knell of tourism in Britain.
The Lake District in Cumbria has some of the finest hotels in Britain. The Sharrow Bay hotel, for example, receives the Egon Ronay gold plate award year after year. They have happened, not because of a Government plan in the Socialist years, not because of this Government, and not because local councils have taken the initiative, but because of the enterprise and nous of individuals who got them going.
I am concerned, like my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), about the direction part of the document. I do not like the references to sorting out the geographical distribution. My hon. Friend the Minister has been sound this evening in expressing the Government's reservations. We know that it would be beneficial to extend the season, but that will be done by letting entrepreneurs offer quality and improve their marketing, thereby persuading tourists to come. We shall not overcome the problems of saturation by allowing the EEC to pass regulations or directions. I know that initially there would be guidelines and incentives, but at the end of the day there would be quotas and levies, with tourists being shunted around Europe or being forbidden to enter certain countries because of a massive EEC plan, with the EEC thinking that it knows best. We have seen EEC quotas and levies placed on other products, and the last thing that tourism needs is that sort of centralised direction and guidance from the EEC.
I have no great reservations about standardising some of the information that is offered to tourists, but I oppose the concept of standardised grading across Europe. Tourism in the United Kingdom has expanded at record levels and it is experiencing record growth, and that has been achieved with the present grading system.
It is argued that when tourists come to Britain they have no idea of the quality of accommodation that they book and that they might be ripped off. I cannot imagine that foreigners are that naive. If someone cares to book into a hotel which has no crowns from the tourist boards, No AA or RAC stars, and has not been recommended by Egon Ronay or Ashley Courtenay, he should appreciate that he is taking some risks. If a tourist cares to book into an establishment which has been recommended by all the experts such as Egon Ronay and Ashley Courtenay,

private entrepreneurs who are our most respected grading experts, he will know that he is going to high-quality accommodation.
If the EEC is concerned about promoting tourism, it should concentrate its efforts on the marketing of Europe generally in the United States and elsewhere. If it is concerned about tourism, it should concentrate on demolishing the air cartel in Europe, which keeps air fares artificially high. If it is genuinely concerned, it should concentrate on the problem of the free movement of people from countries outside the EEC who cross the EEC barriers and allow free movement, with visas, between them. If it is really concerned about tourism in Europe, it should support the British Government on the stance that they have taken against terrorism in Europe. Other EEC countries should show more guts in taking the Prime Minister's approach, the British approach.
I was in the United States in April after the Libyan bombing had occurred, and I and my colleagues went to great efforts to stress that Britain was the safest country in Europe for tourism. We said that our airports were the safest. The same claim could not be made for the airports of Greece or of other countries in the EEC. If the EEC wishes to take action on tourism, it should concentrate on the features that I have mentioned and leave free enterprise to get on with providing quality and the standards that tourists want. As my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives said, tourists come to Britain for our quality and standards. If the EEC wishes to extend its dead hand into some great programme of Socialist planning and control, with the direction of tourism, it will kill off an industry which is experiencing record growth because it is a private enterprise industry.

Mr. John Butterfill: Much of what I intended to say has already been said. The tourist industry is the largest employer, with 4·5 million employees. It is the fastest growing industry. Employment in the industry is increasing by about 50,000 people a year. The private enterprise system is responsible.
Although I applaud some of the Commission's recommendations in the document, some are beyond belief. They are examples of Socialist planning.
I agree that we should be considering reductions in air fares. It is suggested that we might do something about the EIII form by improving the administration of medical facilities for tourists. Why improve the administration? Why not get rid of it altogether and establish that any European citizen has the same right to medical facilities in any Community country?
People talk about establishing the ecu as a popular currency. Who outside Brussels has even heard of the ecu? Certainly the tourists who come to my constituency have not.
It is suggested that we should have a detailed study of integrated passenger flows so that investment planning can be worked out. Investment planning by whom? Are we talking about the bureaucrats in Brussels? That would be better done by the industry which has proved already that it can do it. There is talk about saturation area studies, inventories of pleasure parks, and the establishment of social tourism. Will that create jobs for anyone other than the bureaucrats in Brussels?
There is talk about rural tourism. That is a good idea. It is to be publicised, but will it really be publicised?


Apparently, we are to have standardised accommodation for rural tourism. Perhaps we are to have the standardised Euro-cottage throughout Europe, not French gites or little Greek tavernas, but the standard Euro-cottage with signs in three languages. All this is bureaucratic nonsense.
There is talk about getting rid of visas. We should all be delighted at that. But we can do that only if Europe can be persuaded to adopt a common policy on foreign affairs. We have not yet achieved that.
Let us examine the Greek Government's attitude to terrorism. Can we envisage that those who would be acceptable to the Greek Government for a visa, would also be acceptable to the British Government? There was a sad vote recently in the United Nations about the Falkland Islands. Can we imagine that visas might be given by certain European countries to Argentine nationals who might not—at present at least—be acceptable in Britain?
All this is Euro pie in the sky. If the bureaucrats in Brussels really want to do something for British tourism, they should follow the Secretary of State's example and examine how to reduce regulations. They should encourage other European countries to follow our example and get rid of all the regulations. Then they could, like Britain, achieve a massive increase in tourism. The European increase in tourism has been sixfold over the last 40 years; ours has been sevenfold. That is the example that the Commission should follow.

Mr. Tony Speller: I am the only qualified caterer in the House, but my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Gregory) has qualifications connected with wine, which may not go down well with many Methodist voters.
Colleagues have spoken exclusively about domestic problems without realising that we are talking about "Platitudes Incorporated." We are asked to accept a document, but it is hard at 12.50 am to raise any passion about it in the Chamber. I suspect it might be better elsewhere. It is strange that the House is asked to approve in principle platitudinous matters. If any hon. Members query that point, I should ask them to refer to the pages before us. We are told that we should entrust our tourist organisations to national tourist bodies. We have the English Tourist Board, the AA and the RAC. We have therefore done that already. It is said that we should have standardised symbols. We have standardised symbols—they are coming out of our ears. In essence, this is a vast amount of paper. It is not as vast as usual. It weighs less than 1 kg, which is good business for the EC paper makers.
As the only qualified, ex-professional caterer in the House—I stopped working for a living upon being elected to the House—I suggest that we should do certain basic things. Let us first ensure that we have plenty of high quality, properly trained and properly equipped students. One of the daftest things in the world is that the staff—excellent or otherwise—of any hotel in this city are not from this country. The reason is simple. Our young people do not have the required qualifications. They are not properly trained or properly equipped. That is not the result of any Government's policies. It has been happening for many years.
I am happy to say that the national advisory body on staffing and higher education will find us more young people to train in higher levels of catering. But we have not applied the capital, the area or the equipment. We must

go begging to industry, saying, "Please give us some cookers, fridges and freezers so that we can train our young people." How illogical we are. We will quite happily accept the documents tonight without willing, let alone paying for, the necessary equipment.
Standards and signing are mentioned in these papers. But what standards? Frankly, in this country, it is difficult to know what standard to follow. There are certain standards in the area of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris).
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) spoke about the New Forest. Nothing will extend the New Forest tourist season into November, December, January or February. If we think that we can extend the tourist season by pouring money into the New Forest, we are wrong. We have to make the best of our natural attributes. Frankly, those attributes are the young people coming into the catering industry.
I pay credit to my hon. Friend the Minister who is responsible for small business. He has tried to get youngsters into various training schemes. Let us train and properly equip young people, then we can compete with the rest of the world. Let us not have acres of paper saying, "Let us have a common standard." Some of the pictures are fun, and some are daft. None of them is worth a penny compared with training.
We offer all the things that the rest of the world wants to see. We have the antiquity, the good things of nature, and the excellence. Our problem is a lack of confidence and the tremendous slating of the people who provide the service. We talk down our catering ability. The Americans talk up their catering ability. The French are naturally proud. The Dutch are naturally good caterers. The British always talk themselves down. If we gave our youngsters the chance, the equipment, and the training—to paraphrase the late Sir Winston Churchill—we can do the job in catering. It is the biggest employer in the country. Tourism is part of catering. There is nothing wrong with being a service industry. If one turns raw material into food, one is as much part of an industry as if one turned paper and ink into printing, or turned pig iron into machinery. Until we realise that catering is a profession—just as counselling, surveying or architecture are professions—we shall always hide behind bits of paper such as this.
Many of us are perhaps less than enchanted with the EEC, but it is largely our own fault that, when we discuss documents of this sort in the dead of night, we talk of local matters and then go on our way, happily, to bed. We should realise that we have the best raw material in the world. We have some of the best trainers in the world. We are lamentably weak in putting the two together and making our tourist industry the best in the world.

Mr. Trippier: We have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) for making the point that he did in his concluding remarks. It is perhaps the most fundamental and important point. We are talking about investment in our young people who are coming from school and entering what we all agree to be an important, dynamic sector. Without that investment, we are wasting our time.
I particularly welcomed the speech of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman). This is the second time


that I have had to say that, and I hope that it does not get him into trouble with selection in his constituency. On two occasions he has paid a warm tribute to the sector and recognised that it is growing and dynamic and that the jobs in it are responsible and serious. My only argument with him is that he should exert some influence on the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon), and we know that he has considerable influence on his hon. Friend.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman's speech because I am happy to stand at the Dispatch Box and pay credit to Labour, Liberal, SDP as well as Conservative councillors who are playing a significant part on many regional tourist boards and are completley dedicated to the task in hand. What is upsetting is that my only difficulty on the subject is in this House. That is relfected, as it has been in this debate, by the attendance of so many of my hon. Friends and so few Opposition Members. [Interruption.] It is not only that. It is a clear recognition——

Mr. Maclean: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. An allegation has come from the Labour Front Bench that all Conservative Members present have a pecuniary interest in tourism. I cannot speak for other hon. Members, but I certainly do not, and I should like that allegation to be withdrawn.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): First, I did not hear any allegation and, secondly, if it was made, I am not sure whether it was out of order. I think that we should return to the Minister's reply.

Mr. Trippier: Now I have only four minutes left in which to reply and I am afraid that I shall have to write to hon. Members to answer their points. Many good points were made.
Some hon. Members made a number of political points to get them off their chests, but we all agree that in many areas of tourism there is a need for partnership. I agree with that, but I cannot stomach Opposition Members saying that pump priming by the Government is needed. We have substantially increased the specific section 4 grant under the tourism legislation and it is used in many different places as a pump priming mechanism. I accept that it is needed. It has certainly been used in Portsmouth, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr. Hancock) knows, and it has been used on many occasions in York.
It is important that Opposition Members remember that the contribution from the private sector is so high that I have never found it so high in any other sector of British industry. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean). I say that from my experience at both the Department of Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry. As the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South suggested, on the question of pump priming there can he a multiplier effect and the contribution from the private sector can be greater than in any other sector.
I must agree with the vast majority of my hon. Friends, but, sadly, perhaps not with my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Gregory), on the standards of hotel classification. We are all getting a bit carried away, and some people are misunderstanding the fact that we are talking about standardised symbols for hotels only, not

about the classification of standards of hotels. It is a pity that the House is not televised so that I could hold this document up and let everyone see it. I have here a number of pictures which do not require any writing beneath them. It would be a good test to see if hon. Members could understand them. The vast majority of people in the United Kingdom and abroad may be able to understand them. They are so simple that it might be an idea to run a competition in The House Magazine.

Mr. Speller: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Trippier: I am sorry, but no. We are simply encouraging the insertion of these symbols at this stage and going no further. Nor should we. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) of that and I agree with everything that he said.
All that we are suggesting tonight, as I said in my opening speech, is that there has to be a balance. We have to balance the fact that we are trying to deregulate wherever necessary, so that we do not act as a brake on people's enterprise, with the fact that at the same time we should do all that we can to strenthen and develop this important sector. The most important thing to come out of the debate tonight is that the European commission and the Community overall should do everything possible to promote Europe as a major tourist destination for the rest of the world.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 4761/86 of 6th February 1986, a proposal for Community action in the field of tourism, and the supplementary explanatory memorandum from the Department of Employment dated 24th November 1986; welcomes tourism's contribution to economic growth in the Community; and endorses the Government's efforts to ensure that Community instruments on tourism accord with that objective.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c

POLICE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments &amp;c.)

That the draft Functions of Traffic Wardens (Scotland) Amendment Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 12th November, be approved.—[Mr. Maude.]

Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

NOISE FROM DOMESTIC APPLIANCES

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(5). (Standing Committees on European Community Documents)

That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 4293/82 and 10998/83 on the noise emitted by domestic appliances and the explanatory memoranda submitted by the Department of Trade and Industry on 15th February 1982, 16th January 1984 and 17th July 1986; and supports the Government's intention to agree to the adoption of this Directive as a step to reducing incipient non-tariff barriers to the export of United Kingdom manufactured appliances.—[Mr. Maude.]

Question agreed to.

Industry Year 1986

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Maude.]

1 am

Mr. Alistair Burt: I shall begin by conveying my thanks for the opportunity of raising this important topic. No one need over-stress the importance of industry to an area such as the one that I represent. Industry Year has been a special event, and I felt that it was time I had an opportunity to bring to the House some of the important achievements that have taken place, especially in my constituency and the north-west. I shall be concentrating my remarks on the north-west.
I should pay an appropriate tribute to the Department of Trade and Industry, represented by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. The Department has offered support in cash and kind to our regional co-ordinating committee in the north-west for Industry Year. It has offered support not only by placing a senior civil servant on the co-ordinating committee and, in the best possible way, by not imposing any particular ideas on the committee, but allowing it to push through its own ideas and spread the message of Industry Year throughout our area. The support of the Department of Trade and Industry has been most welcome.
I should like to couple my thanks to and appreciation of the help of the Department with that of the work of the co-ordinating committee in the north-west. I would like to thank Mr. Jim Kennedy, the full-time regional co-ordinator and the chairman, Con Allday, and his committee who have been responsible for some major achievements throughout the year. It would be appropriate to recap the aims and objectives of Industry Year which have reference not only to the north-west but to the whole country. The aims were to encourage a better understanding of industry, its essential role and its service to the community, to win acceptance for it and ultimately to lay the foundations for a more prosperous economy. Industry Year in the north-west sought, therefore, through action in three specific areas, to underwrite those fundamental aims.
The first thing it sought to do was to link education and industry. Industry Year aimed to accelerate the growth of links between industry and education from primary schools to universities and polytechnics in order to increase the understanding and resources of both. Specific targets existed, such as the linking of all secondary and as many primary schools as possible with local companies and broadening teacher training so that teachers became more aware of the importance of industry and its contribution to the community.
The second type of action envisaged was action by industry itself. Industry Year was designed to encourage industry, and the people involved in it, to communicate more effectively the part industry plays in society and to earn the reputation its importance merits. Companies were encouraged to hold open days, to link with schools, colleges and universities and to strengthen contacts with the media, Members of Parliament and local community groups and to demonstrate an increasing concern for the environment.
The third action task that Industry Year set itself was to increase the general public's awareness of the importance of industry. This was to be by using activities,

events and all channels of communication to focus the attention of the general public on industry and to make people more aware of what industry does and why it is important to them.
The co-ordinating committee that is responsible for Industry Year in the north-west claims a great deal of success in each of these three areas for action. First, as regards activity in education, the north-west can claim that 270 secondary schools—50 per cent. of the total in the north-west—are now linked in some way with local companies. That is double the figure in 1985, and it is one of the most important achievements of Industry Year in the north-west. In some areas, all secondary schools have been linked with industry.
Secondly, a growing but smaller number of primary schools are now linked with local companies. It is about 20 per cent. so there is still some way to go.
Thirdly, throughout the area there have been at least 20 industry weeks in schools, involving teachers, parents, pupils and industrialists. Innumerable conferences, workshops and seminars have been devoted to industry and education. There have been many other activities, including work shadowing, schemes involving teachers coming into industry and managers going into schools.
In the case of the second target area—ensuring that industry does a little more to communicate its importance to people—the north-west has also had a tremendous response. Well over 1,000 companies have done something related to Industry Year in the north-west. Over 500 of these companies have linked up with local groups. Companies linked to local groups, or independently, have generated over 1,000 major events to publicise Industry Year's aims and to gain greater understanding of what they do. There have been open days, exhibitions, competitions, conferences, sponsored concerts, workshops, seminars and trade shows. All these events have been publicised, and they have increased the awareness of the general public of what industry does.
As for what has been done to increase the general public's awareness of what industry does, there have been some spectacular events. Even more important has been the sheer number of grass roots events throughout the community in the north-west. All these activities have contributed to the success of Industry Year in the northwest. I pay special tribute to the activities in my constituency. Bury has taken the lead in a number of ways and been responsible for leading the north-west in a number of most important areas.
There are 17 secondary schools in the area covered by my local education authority. In 1986, only one of those schools was linked to an industrial company, but 13 schools are now linked in some way to industry. There is great hope that by the end of this calendar year all 17 schools will be linked. That is a tremendous achievement, and it is largely due to a most active local committee. There is a very good blend of industry, education and local authority personnel. I pay tribute to them for all the work that they have done in their spare time to make Industry Year a success in the town.
One company, Milikens, and one individual, Mr. Clive Jeanes, who led the local group in Bury, went beyond the call of duty in presenting that industry to the town arid in rallying support for the cause of Industry Year. I understand that Mr. Jeanes has generated so much interest in the school to which the company is attached that teachers from all the disciplines come regularly to the


factory to learn about new ways in which they can make its activities exciting to their pupils. Regular contact between teachers and industrial managers has proved to be most valuable in itself, quite apart from the benefit to the children.
I should like to mention a young lady, Lindsay Pickston. Towards the tail end of 1985 she saw a scheme advertised on television called work shadowing. The purpose of the scheme was to give young girls, in particular, more of an insight into business and industry because of this country's poor record in attracting young ladies into those activities. Lindsay Pickston was not content with just seeing that television programme. She contacted me and asked for my help in setting up a work shadowing scheme in the town. I put this to my local chamber of commerce, and by dint of its efforts a local company called Bibby and Baron agreed to take on Lindsay Pickston. Through her own efforts Lindsay found herself placed with this company and had a most worthwhile week on the work shadowing scheme.
It is people like Lindsay and companies like Bibby and Baron and Milikens and the enthusiasm generated in a town like Bury that has made Industry Year a great success.
I want to speak about more than just bare achievements, for they alone will not tackle our fundamental problem—industrial attitudes. Britain is a curious paradox of an industrialised country with an anti-industrial culture. We know that there is reluctance to engage in trade and we are all aware of the apocryphal stories about youngsters who are persuaded not to go into trade but are told that they should enter the safe professions like the Civil Service—anything other than soil their hands. We know the apocryphal stories about people who are looked down upon because they are in trade until they suddenly make a great deal of money, at which point they suddenly become socially acceptable.
Those attitudes of reluctance have been such that Britain has been deprived of people whose talents, had they been applied in industry, would have made Britain even more prosperous than it is. A whole series of achievements and open days and shows will not change attitudes in Britain. We need a continuing effort by people involved in industry and in the wider community and, above all, by people engaged in education. That will start to change fundamental attitudes towards industry, and that is the point that I want to emphasise.
The activity in the north-west has been designed to change attitudes and that will be one of its lasting effects. There has been a considerable amount of activity in the schools, and the process is beginning to come to fruition because it has changed the attitudes of teachers and educationists towards industry. A growing number of youngsters are beginning to see that industry can offer them a career, no matter what their skills and abilities may be, because business offers opportunity to all. A greater awareness and appreciation of economics is growing in the schools and more schools are taking part in schemes such as Young Enterprise or are setting up companies within the schools enabling pupils to learn what the business world is all about.
We have seen changes in the curricula in schools. That is not necessarily associated with Industry Year, but, added to the effort of Industry Year, schemes such as

TVEI are having an even greater impact. A growing enterprise culture has gradually spread throughout our area with the development and further progress of institutions such as Enterprise Agency. All in all, attitudes needed to change. They have been attacked and they are changing because of the variety of activities which the Industry Year co-ordinating committee has organised in the north-west.
Officially, Industry Year will end at the end of this year, but the growing awareness in the north-west that industry matters will not come to an end. I should like to see the continued existence of the regional co-ordinating group. I hope that local commitments to education, openness in industry and the greater public awareness of what goes on will continue. Above all, I hope that the attempts being made to change the attitude of society towards industry will continue.
The north-west had an industrial base for the greater part of the last century. It brought great wealth to our area, but at the turn of the 20th century it also brought great hardship and despair as our former important industries declined for one reason or another. However, our fundamental core of industrial awareness and knowledge has not been lost. The traditional skills need to be applied to new industries, but for some time there has been reluctance to accept this. Industry Year has sought to tackle this basic problem. People have begun to realise that their prosperity lies not in the past but in the future, and that traditional skills can be used to forge new successes and new industries.
The north-west has a proud record in new industries and new technologies, but too often it is linked with the smokestack industries of the past. The classic picture that is sometimes seen from the south of England of the Coronation street terraces and the factory chimneys is no longer truly representative of the north of England. It will certainly not be representative of the north of England's future.
Industry Year has made great strides. The efforts of people throughout the region and in my constituency have all been designed to change fundamental attitudes towards industry and to point the way to the future. I am pleased and delighted that the Department of Trade and Industry has taken such an active interest in the activities of Industry Year 1986 in the north-west. I am convinced that should the north-west decide to continue Industry Year—I am sure that in some way it will continue the activities of 1986—the Department of Trade and Industry will want to play a part.
Industry Year has been a great success. The future of the north of England—if it is moved by some of the attitudes that have changed in the past year—will be all the more secure, thanks to the efforts of so many people.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. John Butcher): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt) for the choice of a timely subject to raise on the Adjournment of the House. I confirm that I shall convey to my officials in the regional office and the north-west his appreciation of the work that they have done. I shall ensure that they get a copy of Hansard. I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the north-west regional committee and those who worked so hard in his constituency on making great progress, particularly in the area of school-industry links.
I also suspect that Miss Lindsay Pickston may well have made history, as I am sure that she is the first girl sixth former to be mentioned in the Official Report of the proceedings of the House.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving the House the opportunity to look at what has happened in Industry Year and the role that Government have been able to play.
I should perhaps first remind the House that Industry Year is not a Government campaign. It has been organised by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, more commonly known as the RSA. The aims of Industry Year were set out at the beginning. Industry Year is trying to increase understanding of the role of industry and its services to the community. The year has just been the start of this campaign. and RSA will be announcing next week how it intends to continue after 31 December.
Using a central team under the directorship of Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a network of regional working groups has been built up across the country to take the campaign down to a local level. Much of this effort has been voluntary. I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those people and to thank them for the hard work that they have put in.
Many companies have provided magnificent support for the campaign, and their contribution has been more than matched by teachers and others in education. In fact, perhaps one of the most notable achievements of Industry Year is that it has enabled people to build on previous industry-education activities, many of them started by my own Department's industry education unit. That is why we have taken the lead in providing Government support for the campaign.
One element of our support is that we have contributed £850,000 towards central running costs. This is over half these costs, and we have also seconded a press officer to the central team. We have done this so that contributions from industry can be concentrated in the local areas where they will have the most impact.
That is by no means the end of our support. Over the lifetime of the campaign we have spent over £1 million on regional Industry Year. This money has been used on a wide variety of projects chosen by the people in the local areas. We have put money towards industry days or weeks, where schools or colleges and local companies get together to see how they can help each other. We have helped fund local newsletters used to alert more people to the need to become involved. We have provided support for conferences, exhibitions, display material, and so on. What is important is that we have listened to what local people have said they wanted. We have joined in the collaboration between industry and education and provided financial help where it was most needed.
I know that the IY team in my hon. Friend's constituency has been extremely active over the past year under the leadership of Mr. Clive Jeanes of Miliken Industries Ltd. They are obviously very good fund raisers in Bury, North, because they have not approached us for money to support any of their activities so far. We would be happy to consider any proposals for part funding activities if they need support from us.
We have also done things for Industry Year nationally. One of the best known is the workshadowing scheme, to which my hon. Friend referred. Like him, I participated in that scheme and can confirm from personal experience that the conclusions gained by the sixth formers in

virtually every case have been very vivid and have been reported back to their constituents, namely, their fellow sixth formers, in tangible form. We have recorded 1,500 shadows under our national scheme. The idea has proved so popular that a number of areas have taken it up and run their own schemes, so the total number of shadowings is much higher than this.
A project that was one of our key targets for Industry Year has also been widely welcomed. This is the mini-enterpise in schools project. Here we have got together with the National Westminster Bank in England and Wales and other banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland to offer every middle and secondary school in the country the chance to run at least one mini-enterprise. The schoolchildren themselves set up and run their own operations. They learn about budgeting, marketing, accounting and product design, by becoming involved in these activities. They all learn what is invloved in running a business. We may have planted the seeds of some mighty enterprise here in Industry Year. I understand that over three quarters of our secondary schools will have had experience of mini-enterprise before the school year ends. That is a fine achievement.
To help schools have access to industrially relevant teaching materials, we have provided each middle and secondary school with a modem. Through these modems schools will have access to material on remote databases. We are helping to set up such a database called NERIS—the national education resource information system. From January, schools will have access to considerable resources of up-to-date and relevant teaching materials, particularly in mathematics, physics and technology.
That is all part of another of our IY targets—the introduction by all LEAs of technology as an examinable subject. Through the work of British School Technology, many LEAs now have fully equipped technology buses travelling among schools making maximum use of scarce resources. We have collaborated with industry to buy and equip buses in some areas. We now lead the world in that element of technology teaching.
Another target was to ensure that every LEA has an individual or body with clear responsibility for promoting school—industry links. We have achieved this through the network of school industry liaison officers, the school curriculum industry partnership and the science and technology regional organisations. Of course, the IY network has been working hard to achieve the associated objective of linking schools with local companies and has achieved great success. So far over £5·85 million has been committed to Industry Year by Government agencies of one sort or another either through direct funding or through funding projects and activities in support of the campaign. On top of this we have taken the opportunity to enhance existing or new projects worth over £20 million. This is what we have identified so far. If I were to look at other areas of Government support for industry, all of which contribute to the central aims of IY, the total would be very much higher.
Of course, neither we nor the Industry Year team are going to rest on our laurels. I have already said that next week the team will be announcing how it intends to continue the campaign next year. A small central team will be maintained at the RSA to provide a focal point for future work. I know from my travels around the country that there is an absolute determination among local groups not to lose the momentum generated this year. The


Government, too, will be supporting the continuing campaign, as we have done this year, in whatever ways we can. I can respond positively to my hon. Friend's suggestions and that is why, at the beginning of my speech, I said that his Adjournment debate was timely. I can now state that the RSA, local groups, the Government and institutions will work together under one banner to change attitudes to industry. And what will that banner be? What else but "Industry, Matters." That will continue into 1987.
I again thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he has done and the encouragement that he has given to the magnificent work that has been done on the ground in Bury, North and the north-west. I am sure that we are all delighted that that work will be built on and not simply left as a one-year effort that could not have borne fruit if we had not persisted with it. That is what we shall do.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past One o'clock.